hough they may not be sufficient to enable the eye to
distinguish anything, they are there; they penetrate, reflected in a
hundred zigzags, into the darkest places of the outer world. But here
there are miles between me and the utmost limits of their influence!"

I held my hand before my face, but could not distinguish by sight that
it was there. A few pale, phosphorescent gleams, that seemed to be
wandering in the air, I was convinced were only the remembrances of the
optic nerve,--eidolons of the retina; but they seemed to some extent
plastic to my thoughts, and ready to become the subjective creations of
the brain, outlined in the dark. I could conceive then how the brain,
excited by fear, or stimulated by emotion, might multiply these
phantasms, moulding them into the likeness of objects and beings that
never had any existence in reality. My sense of hearing, too, seemed
preternaturally sharpened; I could hear the ticking of the watch in my
pocket, the throbbing of my own heart, the murmur of the air in my
lungs. I held my breath so that the slightest sound from any other
source than my own organism should not escape me; the ringing vacancy in
my ears grew more and more painful. Not the remotest breath of any
sound, except a faint dropping of water in some distant place! (I could
think of none but in that awful place called Gorin's Dome.) It seemed to
whisper, "Hush! hush! hush!" Sometimes I could not hear the dropping;
for just the same reason that, if one listens intently to the ticking of
a clock for ten minutes, there are intervals when his ear cannot detect
it, because of its regular monotonous sound.

In such intervals the tympanum of the ear, aching with the dead collapse
of its world, made sounds for itself; and it required the exercise of
reason to convince myself, sometimes, that I did not hear distant
babbling voices.

But hark! There _is_ a sound! Not distant, but near! Here!--There! A
sound like large, soft feet treading cautiously. No, not that,
but--something breathing. Pshaw! I believe it was only the sound of my
own respiration after all!

I did not exactly "whistle to keep my courage up," but, feeling that I
must do something to assert my vitality, my antagonism to this
overpowering dark, I cleared my throat vehemently, defiantly,--AHEM!
AHEM! AHEM!! But it sounded so incongruous, so impertinent I might say,
in the midst of that awful silence! Besides, it woke such queer echoes
from unexpected