, the utter silence of the hour, for it was very late in the
night, the idea of the nature of the enterprise in which he was
engaging himself, a sensation of remoteness from anything like human
companionship, but, more than all, the vivid but undefined anticipation
of something horrible, came upon him with such oppressive weight that
he hesitated as to whether he should proceed. Real uneasiness, however,
respecting the fate of his master, for whom he felt that kind of
attachment which the force of habitual intercourse not unfrequently
engenders respecting objects not in themselves amiable, and also a
latent unwillingness to expose his weakness to the ridicule of his
fellow-servants, combined to overcome his reluctance; and he had just
placed his foot upon the first step of the staircase which conducted
to his master's chamber, when his attention was arrested by a low but
distinct knocking at the hall-door. Not, perhaps, very sorry at finding
thus an excuse even for deferring his intended expedition, he placed
the candle upon a stone block which lay in the hall, and approached the
door, uncertain whether his ears had not deceived him. This doubt was
justified by the circumstance that the hall entrance had been for nearly
fifty years disused as a mode of ingress to the castle. The situation
of this gate also, which we have endeavoured to describe, opening upon
a narrow ledge of rock which overhangs a perilous cliff, rendered it
at all times, but particularly at night, a dangerous entrance. This
shelving platform of rock, which formed the only avenue to the door, was
divided, as I have already stated, by a broad chasm, the planks across
which had long disappeared by decay or otherwise, so that it seemed at
least highly improbable that any man could have found his way across the
passage in safety to the door, more particularly on a night like that,
of singular darkness. The old man, therefore, listened attentively, to
ascertain whether the first application should be followed by another.
He had not long to wait; the same low but singularly distinct knocking
was repeated; so low that it seemed as if the applicant had employed no
harder or heavier instrument than his hand, and yet, despite the immense
thickness of the door, with such strength that the sound was distinctly
audible.

The knock was repeated a third time, without any increase of loudness;
and the old man, obeying an impulse for which to his dying hour he could
ne