?" I cried, with a queer high note getting into my voice
somehow. At that the candle on the corner of the wardrobe went out, and
the one I had relit in the alcove followed.

"Steady on!" I said, "those candles are wanted," speaking with a
half-hysterical facetiousness, and scratching away at a match the
while, "for the mantel candlesticks." My hands trembled so much that
twice I missed the rough paper of the matchbox. As the mantel emerged
from darkness again, two candles in the remoter end of the room were
eclipsed. But with the same match I also relit the larger mirror
candles, and those on the floor near the doorway, so that for the moment
I seemed to gain on the extinctions. But then in a noiseless volley
there vanished four lights at once in different corners of the room, and
I struck another match in quivering haste, and stood hesitating whither
to take it.

As I stood undecided, an invisible hand seemed to sweep out the two
candles on the table. With a cry of terror I dashed at the alcove, then
into the corner and then into the window, relighting three as two more
vanished by the fireplace, and then, perceiving a better way, I dropped
matches on the iron-bound deedbox in the corner, and caught up the
bedroom candlestick. With this I avoided the delay of striking matches,
but for all that the steady process of extinction went on, and the
shadows I feared and fought against returned, and crept in upon me,
first a step gained on this side of me, then on that. I was now almost
frantic with the horror of the coming darkness, and my self-possession
deserted me. I leaped panting from candle to candle in a vain struggle
against that remorseless advance.

I bruised myself in the thigh against the table, I sent a chair
headlong, I stumbled and fell and whisked the cloth from the table in
my fall. My candle rolled away from me and I snatched another as I rose.
Abruptly this was blown out as I swung it off the table by the wind of
my sudden movement, and immediately the two remaining candles followed.
But there was light still in the room, a red light, that streamed across
the ceiling and staved off the shadows from me. The fire! Of course I
could still thrust my candle between the bars and relight it.

I turned to where the flames were still dancing between the glowing
coals and splashing red reflections upon the furniture; made two steps
toward the grate, and incontinently the flames dwindled and vanished,
the glow van