ment confirming me in my belief_."

Whether it was the awe and horror that looked out ghastly from his face
as he confronted me, whether it was that I had never hitherto fairly
believed in the reports about his madness, and that the conviction of
their truth now forced itself upon me on a sudden, I know not, but I
felt my blood curdling as he spoke, and I knew in my own heart, as I sat
there speechless, that I dare not turn round and look where he was still
pointing close at my side.

"I see there," he went on, in the same whispering voice, "the figure of
a dark-complexioned man standing up with his head uncovered. One of
his hands, still clutching a pistol, has fallen to his side; the other
presses a bloody handkerchief over his mouth. The spasm of mortal agony
convulses his features; but I know them for the features of a swarthy
man who twice frightened me by taking me up in his arms when I was a
child at Wincot Abbey. I asked the nurses at the time who that man was,
and they told me it was my uncle, Stephen Monkton. Plainly, as if he
stood there living, I see him now at your side, with the death-glare in
his great black eyes; and so have I ever seen him, since the moment when
he was shot; at home and abroad, waking or sleeping, day and night, we
are always together, wherever I go!"

His whispering tones sank into almost inaudible murmuring as he
pronounced these last words. From the direction and expression of his
eyes, I suspected that he was speaking to the apparition. If I had
beheld it myself at that moment, it would have been, I think, a less
horrible sight to witness than to see him, as I saw him now, muttering
inarticulately at vacancy. My own nerves were more shaken than I could
have thought possible by what had passed. A vague dread of being near
him in his present mood came over me, and I moved back a step or two.

He noticed the action instantly.

"Don't go! pray--pray don't go! Have I alarmed you? Don't you believe
me? Do the lights make your eyes ache? I only asked you to sit in the
glare of the candles because I could not bear to see the light that
always shines from the phantom there at dusk shining over you as you sat
in the shadow. Don't go--don't leave me yet!"

There was an utter forlornness, an unspeakable misery in his face as he
spoke these words, which gave me back my self-possession by the simple
process of first moving me to pity. I resumed my chair, and said that I
would stay with him