rth, and drew up a testament for my brother.

So time went on, and the year was drawing to a close.

It was Christmas Eve, and I had gone to bed shortly after twelve
o'clock, having an hour earlier bid good night to John and Mr. Gaskell.
The long habit of watching with, or being in charge of an invalid at
night, had made my ears extraordinarily quick to apprehend even the
slightest murmur. It must have been, I think, near three in the morning
when I found myself awake and conscious of some unusual sound. It was
low and far off, but I knew instantly what it was, and felt a choking
sensation of fear and horror, as if an icy hand had gripped my throat,
on recognising the air of the _Gagliarda_. It was being played on the
violin, and a long way off, but I knew that tune too well to permit of
my having any doubt on the subject.

Any trouble or fear becomes, as you will some day learn, my dear nephew,
immensely intensified and exaggerated at night. It is so, I suppose,
because our nerves are in an excited condition, and our brain not
sufficiently awake to give a due account of our foolish imaginations. I
have myself many times lain awake wrestling in thought with difficulties
which in the hours of darkness seemed insurmountable, but with the dawn
resolved themselves into merely trivial inconveniences. So on this
night, as I sat up in bed looking into the dark, with the sound of that
melody in my ears, it seemed as if something too terrible for words had
happened; as though the evil spirit, which we had hoped was exorcised,
had returned with others sevenfold more wicked than himself, and taken
up his abode again with my lost brother. The memory of another night
rushed to my mind when Constance had called me from my bed at Royston,
and we had stolen together down the moonlit passages with the lilt of
that wicked music vibrating on the still summer air. Poor Constance! She
was in her grave now; yet _her_ troubles at least were over, but here,
as by some bitter irony, instead of carol or sweet symphony, it was the
_Gagliarda_ that woke me from my sleep on Christmas morning.

I flung my dressing-gown about me, and hurried through the corridor and
down the stairs which led to the lower storey and my brother's room.
As I opened my bedroom door the violin ceased suddenly in the middle
of a bar. Its last sound was not a musical note, but rather a horrible
scream, such as I pray I may never hear again. It was a sound such as a
wound