is dead friend, bright and awful by his side, and that it
had gone! In the flash of that quick change, from sleeping to waking, he
had detected, he thought, the unearthly being that, he now felt, watched
him from behind the air, and it had vanished! The library was the same
as in the moment of that supernatural revealing; the open letter lay
upon the table still; only _that_ was gone which had made these common
aspects terrible. Then, all the hard, strong skepticism of his nature,
which had been driven backward by the shock of his first conviction,
recoiled, and rushed within him, violently struggling for its former
vantage ground; till, at length, it achieved the foothold for a doubt.
Could he have dreamed? The ghost, invisible, still watched him. Yes--a
dream--only a dream; but, how vivid--how strange! With a slow thrill
creeping through his veins--the blood curdling at his heart--a cold
sweat starting on his forehead, he stared through the dimness of the
room. All was vacancy.

With a strong shudder, he strode forward, and turned up the flames of
the chandelier. A flood of garish light filled the apartment. In a
moment, remembering the letter to which the phantom of his dream had
pointed, he turned and took it from the table. The last page lay upward,
and every word of the solemn counsel at the end seemed to dilate on the
paper, and all its mighty meaning rushed upon his soul. Trembling in his
own despite, he laid it down and moved away. A physician, he remembered
that he was in a state of violent nervous excitement, and thought that
when he grew calmer its effects would pass from him. But the hand that
had touched him had gone down deeper than the physician, and reached
what God had made.

He strove in vain. The very room, in its light and silence, and the
lurking sentiment of something watching him, became terrible. He could
not endure it. The devils in his heart, grown pusillanimous, cowered
beneath the flashing strokes of his aroused and terrible conscience. He
could not endure it. He must go out. He will walk the streets. It is not
late--it is but ten o'clock. He will go.

The air of his dream still hung heavily about him. He was in the
street--he hardly remembered how he had got there, or when; but there he
was, wrapped up from the searching cold, thinking, with a quiet horror
in his mind, of the darkened room he had left behind, and haunted by the
sense that something was groping about there in the darkness,