round, thicker and faster and swifter, swarming over my head, crawling over my right arm, which was outstretched in involuntary command against all evil beings.  Sometimes I felt myself touched, but not by them; invisible hands touched me.  Once I felt the clutch as of cold, soft fingers at my throat.  I was still equally conscious that if I gave way to fear I should be in bodily peril; and I concentred all my faculties in the single focus of resisting stubborn will.  And I turned my sight from the Shadow; above all, from those strange serpent eyes,—­eyes that had now become distinctly visible.  For there, though in nought else around me, I was aware that there was a will, and a will of intense, creative, working evil, which might crush down my own.

The pale atmosphere in the room began now to redden as if in the air of some near conflagration.  The larvae grew lurid as things that live in fire.  Again the room vibrated; again were heard the three measured knocks; and again all things were swallowed up in the darkness of the dark Shadow, as if out of that darkness all had come, into that darkness all returned.

As the gloom receded, the Shadow was wholly gone.  Slowly, as it had been withdrawn, the flame grew again into the candles on the table, again into the fuel in the grate.  The whole room came once more calmly, healthfully into sight.

The two doors were still closed, the door communicating with the servant’s room still locked.  In the corner of the wall, into which he had so convulsively niched himself, lay the dog.  I called to him,—­no movement; I approached,—­the animal was dead:  his eyes protruded; his tongue out of his mouth; the froth gathered round his jaws.  I took him in my arms; I brought him to the fire.  I felt acute grief for the loss of my poor favorite,—­acute self-reproach; I accused myself of his death; I imagined he had died of fright.  But what was my surprise on finding that his neck was actually broken.  Had this been done in the dark?  Must it not have been by a hand human as mine; must there not have been a human agency all the while in that room?  Good cause to suspect it.  I cannot tell.  I cannot do more than state the fact fairly; the reader may draw his own inference.

Another surprising circumstance,—­my watch was restored to the table from which it had been so mysteriously withdrawn; but it had stopped at the very moment it was so withdrawn, nor, despite all the skill of the watchmaker, has it ever gone since,—­that is, it will go in a strange, erratic way for a few hours, and then come to a dead stop; it is worthless.