ature, which had been
driven backward by the shock of his first conviction, recoiled,
and rushed within him, violently struggling for its former
vantage-ground; till, at length, it achieved the foothold for a
doubt. Could he have dreamed? The ghost, invisible, still watched
him. Yes, a dream,--only a dream; but, how vivid, how strange!
With a slow thrill creeping through his veins, the blood curdling
at his heart, a cold sweat starting on his forehead, he stared
through the dimness of the room. All was vacancy.

With a strong shudder, he strode forward, and turned up the flames
of the chandelier. A flood of garish light filled the apartment.
In a moment, remembering the letter to which the phantom of his
dream had pointed, he turned and took it from the table. The last
page lay upward, and every word of the solemn counsel at the end
seemed to dilate on the paper, and all its mighty meaning rushed
upon his soul. Trembling in his own despite, he laid it down and
moved away. A physician, he remembered that he was in a state of
violent nervous excitement, and thought that when he grew calmer
its effects would pass from him. But the hand that had touched
him had gone down deeper than the physician, and reached what God
had made.

He strove in vain. The very room, in its light and silence, and the
lurking sentiment of something watching him, became terrible. He
could not endure it. The devils in his heart, grown pusillanimous,
cowered beneath the flashing strokes of his aroused and terrible
conscience. He could not endure it. He must go out. He will walk
the streets. It is not late,--it is but ten o'clock. He will go.

The air of his dream still hung heavily about him. He was in the
street,--he hardly remembered how he had got there, or when; but
there he was, wrapped up from the searching cold, thinking, with a
quiet horror in his mind, of the darkened room he had left behind,
and haunted by the sense that something was groping about there
in the darkness, searching for him. The night was still and cold.
The full moon was in the zenith. Its icy splendor lay on the bare
streets, and on the walls of the dwellings. The lighted oblong
squares of curtained windows, here and there, seemed dim and waxen
in the frigid glory. The familiar aspect of the quarter had passed
away, leaving behind only a corpse-like neighborhood, whose huge,
dead features, staring rigidly through the thin, white shroud of
moonlight that covered all, l