not to do, up to this time—to look at the
dead man.

He stretched out his hand towards the
curtains; but checked himself in the very
act of undrawing them, turned his back
sharply on the bed, and walked towards the
chimney-piece, to see what things were
placed on it, and to try if he could keep the
dead man out of his mind in that way.

There was a pewter inkstand on the
chimney-piece, with some mildewed remains
of ink in the bottle. There were two coarse
china ornaments of the commonest kind
and there was a square of embossed card,
dirty and fly-blown, with a collection of
wretched riddles printed on it, in all sorts of
zig-zag directions, and in variously coloured
inks. He took the card, and went away, to
read it, to the table on which the candle was
placed; sitting down, with his back
resolutely turned to the curtained bed.

He read the first riddle, the second, the
third, all in one corner of the card—then
turned it round impatiently to look at
another. Before he could begin reading the
riddles printed here, the sound of the church-
clock stopped him. Eleven. He had got
through an hour of the time, in the room
with the dead man.

Once more he looked at the card. It was
not easy to make out the letters printed on
it, in consequence of the dimness of the light
which the landlord had left him—a common
tallow candle, furnished with a pair of heavy
old-fashioned steel snuffers. Up to this
time, his mind had been too much occupied to
think of the light. He had left the wick of
the candle unsnuffed, till it had risen higher
than the flame, and had burnt into an odd
pent-house shape at the top, from which
morsels of the charred cotton fell off, from
time to time, in little flakes. He took up
the snuffers now, and trimmed the wick.
The light brightened directly, and the room
became less dismal.

Again he turned to the riddles; reading
them doggedly and resolutely, now in one
corner of the card, now in another. All his
efforts, however, could not fix his attention
on them. He pursued his occupation
mechanically, deriving no sort of impression from
what he was reading. It was as if a shadow
from the curtained bed had got between his
mind and the gaily printed letters—a
shadow that nothing could dispel. At last,
he gave up the struggle, and threw the card
from him impatiently, and took to walking
softly up and down the room again.

The dead man, the dead man, the hidden
dead man on the bed! There was the one
persistent idea still haunting him. Hidden!
Was it only the body being there, or was it
the body being there, concealed, that was
preying on his mind? He stopped at the
window, with that doubt in him; once more
listening to the pattering rain, once more
looking out into the black darkness.

Still the dead man! The darkness forced
his mind back upon itself, and set his memory
at work, reviving, with a painfully-vivid
distinctness the momentary impression it had
received from his first sight of the corpse.
Before long the face seemed to be hovering out
in the middle of the darkness, confronting
him through the window, with the paleness
whiter, with the dreadful dull line of light
between the imperfectly-closed eyelids broader
than he had seen it—with the parted lips
slowly dropping farther and farther away
from each other—with the features growing
larger and moving closer, till they seemed to
fill the window and to silence the ram, and to
shut out the night.

The sound of a voice, shouting below stairs,
woke him suddenly from the dream of his
own distempered fancy. He recognised it as
the voice of the landlord. "Shut up at
twelve, Ben," he heard it say. "I'm, off to
bed."

He wiped away the damp that had
gathered on his forehead, reasoned with
himself for a little while, and resolved to shake
his mind free of the ghastly counterfeit which
still clung to it, by forcing himself to confront,
if it was only for a moment, the solemn
reality. Without allowing himself an instant
to hesitate, he parted the curtains at the foot
of the bed, and looked through.

There was the sad, peaceful, white face,
with the awful mystery of stillness on it, laid
back upon the pillow. No stir, no change
there! He only looked at it for a moment
before he closed the curtains again—but that
moment steadied him, calmed him, restored
him—mind and body to himself.

He returned to his old occupation of
walking up and down the room; persevering
in it, this time, till the clock struck again.
Twelve.

As the sound of the clock-bell died away,
it was succeeded by the confused noise, down stairs,
of the drinkers in the tap-room leaving
the house. The next sound, after an interval
of silence, was caused by the barring of
the door, and the closing of the shutters, at
the back of the Inn. Then the silence
followed again, and was disturbed no
more.

He was alone now—absolutely, utterly,
alone with the dead man, till the next
morning.

The wick of the candle wanted trimming
again. He took up the snuffers—but paused
suddenly on the very point of using them,
and looked attentively at the candle—then
back, over his shoulder, at the curtained bed
—then again at the candle. It had been
lighted, for the first time, to show him the
way up stairs, and three parts of it, at least,
were already consumed. In another hour it
would be burnt out. In another hour—unless
he called at once to the man who had shut up
the Inn, for a fresh candle—he would be left
in the dark.