t move till I got up, when
he jumped up too, barking vigorously, as if he had got over his terror
of the previous night. It occurred to me that it might only be to me
that the (doubtless) natural cause or causes of this strange sound were
a mystery, and I told the landlord of my adventure--of which I still
felt the terror in all my frame. I ended by saying that he could, no
doubt, explain the whole affair to me, but that he ought to have told
me of it beforehand. He turned as pale as a sheet, and begged me never
to tell any one what had happened to me, as he would risk the loss of
his customers. He said many travellers had complained about that sound,
which they had heard on bright moonlight nights--that he had examined
everything with the utmost care and attention, and even had the floor
of that room and the adjoining one taken up, as well as making
inquisition into everything in the neighbourhood, without coming upon
the faintest trace of anything to account for this awe-inspiring noise.
It had not been heard for nearly a year before the night I speak of,
and he had been flattering himself that the Principle--whatever it
might be--which was haunting the room had ceased its operation. But
seeing, to his great alarm, that in this he was mistaken, he determined
that he would never, in any circumstances, allow anybody to pass the
night there again."

"Oh! how terrible!" cried Angelica, shuddering like one in the cold
stage of an ague. "That is really most terrible! Oh! I am sure I should
have died if anything like that had happened to me! But I have often
woke up from sleep, suddenly, feeling an indescribable, inexplicable
alarm and anxiety, as if I had been going through something terrible
and alarming; and yet, I had not the slightest idea what it was that I
had been going through, nor the very faintest recollection of any
fearful dream, or anything of that kind. Rather I seemed to be waking
from some condition of complete unconsciousness, like death."

"I know that feeling perfectly well," Dagobert said. "Perhaps it points
straight to the effect upon us of psychical influences external to us,
to which we are compelled to yield ourselves up, whether we choose or
not. Just as the mesmeric subject has no remembrance of the mesmeric
sleep, or of anything which happens in it. Perhaps that sense of fear
and anxiety which we feel on awaking (as we have said), of which the
cause is hidden from us, may be the lingering echo of