I had your orders to
admit no one else?"

"Why, good God! of course he never came," retorted Silas.

"I believe what I believe," returned the porter, putting his tongue into
his cheek with a most roguish air.

"You are an insolent scoundrel," cried Silas, and, feeling that he had
made a ridiculous exhibition of asperity, and at the same time
bewildered by a dozen alarms, he turned and began to run upstairs.

"Do you not want a light, then?" cried the porter.

But Silas only hurried the faster, and did not pause until he had
reached the seventh landing and stood in front of his own door. There he
waited a moment to recover his breath, assailed by the worst
forebodings, and almost dreading to enter the room.

When at last he did so he was relieved to find it dark, and to all
appearance untenanted. He drew a long breath. Here he was, home again in
safety, and this should be his last folly as certainly as it had been
his first. The matches stood on a little table by the bed, and he began
to grope his way in that direction. As he moved, his apprehensions grew
upon him once more, and he was pleased, when his foot encountered an
obstacle, to find it nothing more alarming than a chair. At last he
touched curtains. From the position of the window, which was faintly
visible, he knew he must be at the foot of the bed, and had only to feel
his way along it in order to reach the table in question.

He lowered his hand, but what it touched was not simply a
counterpane--it was a counterpane with something underneath it like the
outline of a human leg. Silas withdrew his arm and stood a moment
petrified.

"What, what," he thought, "can this betoken?"

He listened intently, but there was no sound of breathing. Once more,
with a great effort, he reached out the end of his finger to the spot he
had already touched; but this time he leaped back half a yard, and stood
shivering and fixed with terror. There was something in his bed. What it
was he knew not, but there was something there.

It was some seconds before he could move. Then, guided by an instinct,
he fell straight upon the matches, and, keeping his back towards the
bed, lighted a candle. As soon as the flame had kindled, he turned
slowly round and looked for what he feared to see. Sure enough, there
was the worst of his imaginations realised. The coverlid was drawn
carefully up over the pillow, but it moulded the outline of a human body
lying motionless; and when he d