Meanwhile, our lodger’s habits continued precisely the same.  If, indeed, the sounds which came from his apartments were to be trusted, he and his agents were more on the alert than 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 compensation for the scandalous affront put upon me and my wife by his impertinent visit.  Now, at that time, I had no scruples against what are termed the laws of honour, was by no means deficient in “pluck,” and gifted, moreover, with a somewhat excitable temper.  Yet, I will honestly avow that, so far from courting a collision with the dreaded stranger, I would have recoiled at his very sight, and given my eyes to avoid him, such was the ascendancy which he had acquired over me, as well as everybody else in my household, in his own quiet, irresistible, hellish way.