sift the matter--if,
indeed, there is anything to _be_ sifted--to the bottom. Meanwhile, go
you about your business, and leave me to mine. But I see how the wind
sits; you want to get rid of me, and so you make the place odious to me.
But it won't do; and if you take to making criminal charges against me,
you had better look to yourself; for two can play at that game."

There was a suppressed whine in all this, which strangely contrasted with
the cool and threatening tone of his previous conversation.

Without answering a word I hurried from the room, and scarcely felt
secure, even when once more in the melancholy chamber, where my poor wife
was weeping.

Miserable, horrible was the night that followed. The loss of our child
was a calamity which we had not dared to think of. It had come, and with
a suddenness enough to bereave me of reason. It seemed all unreal, all
fantastic. It needed an effort to convince me, minute after minute, that
the dreadful truth was so; and the old accustomed feeling that she was
still alive, still running from room to room, and the expectation that I
should hear her step and her voice, and see her entering at the door,
would return. But still the sense of dismay, of having received some
stunning, irreparable blow, remained behind; and then came the horrible
effort, like that with which one rouses himself from a haunted sleep, the
question, "What disaster is this that has befallen?"--answered, alas! but
too easily, too terribly! Amidst all this was perpetually rising before
my fancy the obscure, dilated figure of our lodger, as he had confronted
me in his malign power that night. I dismissed the image with a shudder
as often as it recurred; and even now, at this distance of time, I have
felt more than I could well describe in the mere effort to fix my
recollection upon its hated traits, while writing the passages I have
just concluded.

This hateful scene I did not recount to my poor wife. Its horrors were
too fresh upon me. I had not courage to trust myself with the agitating
narrative; and so I sate beside her, with her hand locked in mine: I had
no comfort to offer but the dear love I bore her.

At last, like a child, she cried herself to sleep--the dull, heavy
slumber of worn-out grief. As for me, the agitation of my soul was too
fearful and profound for repose. My eye accidentally rested on the holy
volume, which lay upon the table open, as I had left it in the morning;
and the fir