han ever. I can convey to you, good
reader, no notion, even the faintest, of the dreadful sensation always
more or less present to my mind, and sometimes with a reality which
thrilled me almost to frenzy--the apprehension that I had admitted into
my house the incarnate spirit of the dead or damned, to torment me and
my family.

It was some nights after the burial of our dear little baby; we had not
gone to bed until late, and I had slept, I suppose, some hours, when I
was awakened by my wife, who clung to me with the energy of terror. She
said nothing, but grasped and shook me with more than her natural
strength. She had crept close to me, and was cowering with her head under
the bedclothes.

The room was perfectly dark, as usual, for we burned no night-light; but
from the side of the bed next her proceeded a voice as of one sitting
there with his head within a foot of the curtains--and, merciful heavens!
it was the voice of our lodger.

He was discoursing of the death of our baby, and inveighing, in the old
mocking tone of hate and suppressed fury, against the justice, mercy, and
goodness of God. He did this with a terrible plausibility of sophistry,
and with a resolute emphasis and precision, which seemed to imply, "I
have got something to tell you, and, whether you like it or like it not,
I _will_ say out my say."

To pretend that I felt anger at his intrusion, or emotion of any sort,
save the one sense of palsied terror, would be to depart from the truth.
I lay, cold and breathless, as if frozen to death--unable to move, unable
to utter a cry--with the voice of that demon pouring, in the dark, his
undisguised blasphemies and temptations close into my ears. At last the
dreadful voice ceased--whether the speaker went or stayed I could not
tell--the silence, which he might be improving for the purpose of some
hellish strategem, was to me more tremendous even than his speech.

We both lay awake, not daring to move or speak, scarcely even breathing,
but clasping one another fast, until at length the welcome light of day
streamed into the room through the opening door, as the servant came in
to call us. I need not say that our nocturnal visitant had left us.

The magnanimous reader will, perhaps, pronounce that I ought to have
pulled on my boots and inexpressibles with all available despatch, run to
my lodger's bedroom, and kicked him forthwith downstairs, and the entire
way moreover out to the public road, as some