ible ringing
sound."

No sooner had these syllables passed my lips, than--as if a shield
of brass had indeed, at the moment, fallen heavily upon a floor of
silver--I became aware of a distinct, hollow, metallic, and clangorous,
yet apparently muffled reverberation. Completely unnerved, I leaped to
my feet; but the measured rocking movement of Usher was undisturbed. I
rushed to the chair in which he sat. His eyes were bent fixedly
before him, and throughout his whole countenance there reigned a stony
rigidity. But, as I placed my hand upon his shoulder, there came a
strong shudder over his whole person; a sickly smile quivered about his
lips; and I saw that he spoke in a low, hurried, and gibbering murmur,
as if unconscious of my presence. Bending closely over him, I at length
drank in the hideous import of his words.

"Not hear it?--yes, I hear it, and _have_ heard it.
Long--long--long--many minutes, many hours, many days, have I heard
it--yet I dared not--oh, pity me, miserable wretch that I am!--I dared
not--I _dared_ not speak! _We have put her living in the tomb!_ Said I
not that my senses were acute? I _now_ tell you that I heard her first
feeble movements in the hollow coffin. I heard them--many,
many days ago--yet I dared not--_I dared not speak!_ And
now--to-night--Ethelred--ha! ha!--the breaking of the hermit's door,
and the death-cry of the dragon, and the clangor of the shield!--say,
rather, the rending of her coffin, and the grating of the iron hinges of
her prison, and her struggles within the coppered archway of the vault!
Oh whither shall I fly? Will she not be here anon? Is she not hurryin
my haste? Have I not heard her footstep on the stair? Do I not
distinguish that heavy and horrible beating of her heart? Madman!"--here
he sprang furiously to his feet, and shrieked out his syllables, as if
in the effort he were giving up his soul--"_Madman! I tell you that she
now stands without the door!_"

As if in the superhuman energy of his utterance there had been found
the potency of a spell--the huge antique pannels to which the speaker
pointed, threw slowly back, upon the instant, their ponderous and ebony
jaws. It was the work of the rushing gust--but then without those doors
there _did_ stand the lofty and enshrouded figure of the lady Madeline
of Usher. There was blood upon her white robes, and the evidence of some
bitter struggle upon every portion of her emaciated frame. For a moment
she remained t