searching
for him. The night was still and cold. The full moon was in the zenith.
Its icy splendor lay on the bare streets, and on the walls of the
dwellings. The lighted oblong squares of curtained windows, here and
there, seemed dim and waxen in the frigid glory. The familiar aspect of
the quarter had passed away, leaving behind only a corpse-like
neighborhood, whose huge, dead features, staring rigidly through the
thin, white shroud of moonlight that covered all, left no breath upon
the stainless skies. Through the vast silence of the night he passed
along; the very sound of his footfalls was remote to his muffled sense.

Gradually, as he reached the first corner, he had an uneasy feeling that
a thing--a formless, unimaginable thing--was dogging him. He had thought
of going down to his club-room; but he now shrank from entering, with
this thing near him, the lighted rooms where his set were busy with
cards and billiards, over their liquors and cigars, and where the heated
air was full of their idle faces and careless chatter, lest some one
should bawl out that he was pale, and ask him what was the matter, and
he should answer, tremblingly, that something was following him, and was
near him then! He must get rid of it first; he must walk quickly, and
baffle its pursuit by turning sharp corners, and plunging into devious
streets and crooked lanes, and so lose it!

It was difficult to reach through memory to the crazy chaos of his mind
on that night, and recall the route he took while haunted by this
feeling; but he afterward remembered that, without any other purpose
than to baffle his imaginary pursuer, he traversed at a rapid pace a
large portion of the moonlit city; always (he knew not why) avoiding the
more populous thoroughfares, and choosing unfrequented and tortuous
byways, but never ridding himself of that horrible confusion of mind in
which the faces of his dead friend and the pale woman were strangely
blended, nor of the fancy that he was followed. Once, as he passed the
hospital where Feval died, a faint hint seemed to flash and vanish from
the clouds of his lunacy, and almost identify the dogging goblin with
the figure of his dream; but the conception instantly mixed with a
disconnected remembrance that this was Christmas eve, and then slipped
from him, and was lost. He did not pause there, but strode on. But just
there, what had been frightful became hideous. For at once he was
possessed with the convict