And it will be thought very strange, but it would be weak not to add, that I myself, though bent on the investigation I have spoken of, pledged to Roland to carry it out, and feeling that my boy’s health, perhaps his life, depended on the result of my inquiry,—­I felt the most unaccountable reluctance to pass these ruins on my way home.  My curiosity was intense; and yet it was all my mind could do to pull my body along.  I daresay the scientific people would describe it the other way, and attribute my cowardice to the state of my stomach.  I went on; but if I had followed my impulse, I should have turned and bolted.  Everything in me seemed to cry out against it:  my heart thumped, my pulses all began, like sledge-hammers, beating against my ears and every sensitive part.  It was very dark, as I have said; the old house, with its shapeless tower, loomed a heavy mass through the darkness, which was only not entirely so solid as itself.  On the other hand, the great dark cedars of which we were so proud seemed to fill up the night.  My foot strayed out of the path in my confusion and the gloom together, and I brought myself up with a cry as I felt myself knock against something solid.  What was it?  The contact with hard stone and lime and prickly bramble-bushes restored me a little to myself.  “Oh, it’s only the old gable,” I said aloud, with a little laugh to reassure myself.  The rough feeling of the stones reconciled me.  As I groped about thus, I shook off my visionary folly.  What so easily explained as that I should have strayed from the path in the darkness?  This brought me back to common existence, as if I had been shaken by a wise hand out of all the silliness of superstition.  How silly it was, after all!  What did it matter which path I took?  I laughed again, this time with better heart, when suddenly, in a moment, the blood was chilled in my veins, a shiver stole along my spine, my faculties seemed to forsake me.  Close by me, at my side, at my feet, there was a sigh.  No, not a groan, not a moaning, not anything so tangible,—­a perfectly soft, faint, inarticulate sigh.  I sprang back, and my heart stopped beating.  Mistaken! no, mistake was impossible.  I heard it as clearly as I hear myself speak; a long, soft, weary sigh, as if drawn to the utmost, and emptying out a load of sadness that filled the breast.  To hear this in the solitude, in the dark, in the night (though it was still early), had an effect which I cannot describe.  I feel it now,—­something cold creeping over me, up into my hair, and down to my feet, which refused to move.  I cried out, with a trembling voice, “Who is there?” as I had done before; but there was no reply.