ished, the reflections rushed together and disappeared, and
as I thrust the candle between the bars darkness closed upon me like the
shutting of an eye, wrapped about me in a stifling embrace, sealed my
vision, and crushed the last vestiges of self-possession from my brain.
And it was not only palpable darkness, but intolerable terror. The
candle fell from my hands. I flung out my arms in a vain effort to
thrust that ponderous blackness away from me, and lifting up my voice,
screamed with all my might, once, twice, thrice. Then I think I must
have staggered to my feet. I know I thought suddenly of the moonlit
corridor, and with my head bowed and my arms over my face, made a
stumbling run for the door.

But I had forgotten the exact position of the door, and I struck myself
heavily against the corner of the bed. I staggered back, turned, and was
either struck or struck myself against some other bulky furnishing. I
have a vague memory of battering myself thus to and fro in the darkness,
of a heavy blow at last upon my forehead, of a horrible sensation
of falling that lasted an age, of my last frantic effort to keep my
footing, and then I remember no more.

I opened my eyes in daylight. My head was roughly bandaged, and the man
with the withered hand was watching my face. I looked about me trying
to remember what had happened, and for a space I could not recollect.
I rolled my eyes into the corner and saw the old woman, no longer
abstracted, no longer terrible, pouring out some drops of medicine
from a little blue phial into a glass. "Where am I?" I said. "I seem to
remember you, and yet I can not remember who you are."

They told me then, and I heard of the haunted Red Room as one who bears
a tale. "We found you at dawn," said he, "and there was blood on your
forehead and lips."

I wondered that I had ever disliked him. The three of them in the
daylight seemed commonplace old folk enough. The man with the green
shade had his head bent as one who sleeps.

It was very slowly I recovered the memory of my experience. "You
believe now," said the old man with the withered hand, "that the room is
haunted?" He spoke no longer as one who greets an intruder, but as one
who condoles with a friend.

"Yes," said I, "the room is haunted."

"And you have seen it. And we who have been here all our lives have
never set eyes upon it. Because we have never dared. Tell us, is it
truly the old earl who--"

"No," said I, "it is not."