“Don’t it strike you as an odd procedure to break into a gentleman’s apartment at such an hour, for the purpose of railing at him in the coarsest language?  If you have any charge to make against me, do so; I invite inquiry and defy your worst.  If you think you can bring home to me the smallest share of blame in this unlucky matter, call the coroner, and let his inquest examine and cross-examine me, and sift the matter—­if, indeed, there is anything to be sifted—­to the bottom.  Meanwhile, go you about your business, and leave me to mine.  But I see how the wind sits; you want to get rid of me, and so you make the place odious to me.  But it won’t do; and if you take to making criminal charges against me, you had better look to yourself; for two can play at that game.”

There was a suppressed whine in all this, which strangely contrasted with the cool and threatening tone of his previous conversation.

Without answering a word I hurried from the room, and scarcely felt secure, even when once more in the melancholy chamber, where my poor wife was weeping.

Miserable, horrible was the night that followed.  The loss of our child was a calamity which we had not dared to think of.  It had come, and with a suddenness enough to bereave me of reason.  It seemed all unreal, all fantastic.  It needed an effort to convince me, minute after minute, that the dreadful truth was so; and the old accustomed feeling that she was still alive, still running from room to room, and the expectation that I should hear her step and her voice, and see her entering at the door, would return.  But still the sense of dismay, of having received some stunning, irreparable blow, remained behind; and then came the horrible effort, like that with which one rouses himself from a haunted sleep, the question, “What disaster is this that has befallen?”—­answered, alas! but too easily, too terribly!  Amidst all this was perpetually rising before my fancy the obscure, dilated figure of our lodger, as he had confronted me in his malign power that night.  I dismissed the image with a shudder as often as it recurred; and even now, at this distance of time, I have felt more than I could well describe in the mere effort to fix my recollection upon its hated traits, while writing the passages I have just concluded.

This hateful scene I did not recount to my poor wife.  Its horrors were too fresh upon me.  I had not courage to trust myself with the agitating narrative; and so I sate beside her, with her hand locked in mine:  I had no comfort to offer but the dear love I bore her.

At last, like a child, she cried herself to sleep—­the dull, heavy slumber of worn-out grief.  As for me, the agitation of my soul was too fearful and profound for repose.  My eye accidentally rested on the holy volume, which lay upon the table open, as I had left it in the morning; and the first words which met my eye were these—­“For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory.”  This blessed sentence riveted my attention, and shed a stream of solemn joy upon my heart; and so the greater part of that mournful night, I continued to draw comfort and heavenly wisdom from the same inspired source.