He had had no candle in the room, and it was lighted only by the “darkness visible” that entered through the window.  The candle which I held very imperfectly illuminated the large apartment; but I saw his spectral form floating, rather than walking, back and forward in front of the windows.

At sight of him, though I hated him more than ever, my instinctive fear returned.  He confronted me, and drew nearer and nearer, without speaking.  There was something indefinably fearful in the silent attraction which seemed to be drawing him to me.  I could not help recoiling, little by little, as he came toward me, and with an effort I said—­

“You know why I have come:  the child—­she’s dead!”

“Dead—­ha!—­dead—­is she?” he said, in his odious, mocking tone.

“Yes—­dead!” I cried, with an excitement which chilled my very marrow with horror; “and you have killed her, as you killed my other.”

“How?—­I killed her!—­eh?—­ha, ha!” he said, still edging nearer and nearer.

“Yes; I say you!” I shouted, trembling in every joint, but possessed by that unaccountable infatuation which has made men invoke, spite of themselves, their own destruction, and which I was powerless to resist—­“deny it as you may, it is you who killed her—­wretch!—­FIEND!—­no wonder she could not stand the breath and glare of HELL!”

“And you are one of those who believe that not a sparrow falls to the ground without your Creator’s consent,” he said, with icy sarcasm; “and this is a specimen of Christian resignation—­hey?  You charge his act upon a poor fellow like me, simply that you may cheat the devil, and rave and rebel against the decrees of heaven, under pretence of abusing me.  The breath and flare of hell!—­eh?  You mean that I removed this and these (touching the covering of his mouth and eyes successively) as I shall do now again, and show you there’s no great harm in that.”

There was a tone of menace in his concluding words not to be mistaken.

“Murderer and liar from the beginning, as you are, I defy you!” I shouted, in a frenzy of hate and horror, stamping furiously on the floor.

As I said this, it seemed to me that he darkened and dilated before my eyes.  My senses, thoughts, consciousness, grew horribly confused, as if some powerful, extraneous will, were seizing upon the functions of my brain.  Whether I were to be mastered by death, or madness, or possession, I knew not; but hideous destruction of some sort was impending:  all hung upon the moment, and I cried aloud, in my agony, an adjuration in the name of the three persons of the Trinity, that he should not torment me.

Stunned, bewildered, like a man recovered from a drunken fall, I stood, freezing and breathless, in the same spot, looking into the room, which wore, in my eyes, a strange, unearthly character.  Mr. Smith was cowering darkly in the window, and, after a silence, spoke to me in a croaking, sulky tone, which was, however, unusually submissive.