ing moving over the floor?
Had Margaret left her bed?--No! the mournful voice was speaking
unintermittingly, and speaking from the same distance.

I moved to search for the matches on a chest of drawers, which stood
near the window. Though the morning was at its darkest, and the house
stood midway between two gas-lamps, there was a glimmering of light in
this place. I looked back into the room from the window, and thought
I saw something shadowy moving near the bed. "Take him away!" I heard
Margaret scream in her wildest tones. "His hands are on me: he's feeling
my face, to feel if I'm dead!"

I ran to her, striking against some piece of furniture in the darkness.
Something passed swiftly between me and the bed, as I got near it. I
thought I heard a door close. Then there was silence for a moment; and
then, as I stretched out my hands, my right hand encountered the
little table placed by Margaret's side, and the next moment I felt the
match-box that had been left on it.

As I struck a light, her voice repeated close at my ear:

"His hands are on me: he's feeling my face to feel if I'm dead!"

The match flared up. As I carried it to the candle, I looked round, and
noticed for the first time that there was a second door, at the further
corner of the room, which lighted some inner apartment through glass
panes at the top. When I tried this door, it was locked on the inside,
and the room beyond was dark.

Dark and silent. But was no one there, hidden in that darkness and
silence? Was there any doubt now, that stealthy feet had approached
Margaret, that stealthy hands had touched her, while the room was in
obscurity?--Doubt? There was none on that point, none on any other.
Suspicion shaped itself into conviction in an instant, and identified
the stranger who had passed in the darkness between me and the bedside,
with the man whose presence I had dreaded, as the presence of an evil
spirit in the chamber of death.

He was waiting secretly in the house--waiting for her last moments;
listening for her last words; watching his opportunity, perhaps, to
enter the room again, and openly profane it by his presence! I placed
myself by the door, resolved, if he approached, to thrust him back, at
any hazard, from the bedside. How long I remained absorbed in watching
before the darkness of the inner room, I know not--but some time must
have elapsed before the silence around me forced itself suddenly on my
attention. I turned towa