onous wash hardly
broke the stillness of the place.

The formless longing was now pulling at me with an attraction I could
not deny, though within me there rose and fought against it a horror
only less strong. Here, as in the Blue Room, two souls were struggling
for me. It was the soul of Philip Cardinnock that drew me towards the
tarn and the soul of Samuel Wraxall that resisted. Only, what was the
thing towards which I was being pulled?

I must have stood at least a minute on the brink before I descried a
black object floating at the far end of the tarn. What this object was
I could not make out; but I knew it on the instant to be that for which
I longed, and all my will grew suddenly intent on drawing it nearer.
Even as my volition centred upon it, the black spot began to move slowly
out into the pale radiance towards me. Silently, surely, as though my
wish drew it by a rope, it floated nearer and nearer over the bosom of
the tarn; and while it was still some twenty yards from me I saw it to
be a long black box, shaped somewhat like a coffin.

There was no doubt about it. I could hear the water now sucking at its
dark sides. I stepped down the bank, and waded up to my knees in the
icy water to meet it. It was a plain box, with no writing upon the lid,
nor any speck of metal to relieve the dead black: and it moved with the
same even speed straight up to where I stood.

As it came, I laid my hand upon it and touched wood. But with the touch
came a further sensation that made me fling both arms around the box and
begin frantically to haul it towards the shore.

It was a feeling of suffocation; of a weight that pressed in upon my
ribs and choked the lungs' action. I felt that I must open that box or
die horribly; that until I had it upon the bank and had forced the lid
up I should know no pause from the labour and torture of dying.

This put a wild strength into me. As the box grated upon the few
pebbles by the shore, I bent over it, caught it once more by the sides,
and with infinite effort dragged it up out of the water. It was heavy,
and the weight upon my chest was heavier yet: but straining, panting,
gasping, I hauled it up the bank, dropped it on the turf, and knelt over
it, tugging furiously at the lid.

I was frenzied--no less. My nails were torn until the blood gushed.
Lights danced before me; bells rang in my ears; the pressure on my lungs
grew more intolerable with each moment; but still I