“I confess, Hammond,” I replied to my friend, “I never considered the subject before.  That there must be one Something more terrible than any other thing, I feel.  I cannot attempt, however, even the most vague definition.”

“I am somewhat like you, Harry,” he answered.  “I feel my capacity to experience a terror greater than anything yet conceived by the human mind;—­something combining in fearful and unnatural amalgamation hitherto supposed incompatible elements.  The calling of the voices in Brockden Brown’s novel of Wieland is awful; so is the picture of the Dweller of the Threshold, in Bulwer’s Zanoni; but,” he added, shaking his head gloomily, “there is something more horrible still than those.”

“Look here, Hammond,” I rejoined, “let us drop this kind of talk, for Heaven’s sake!  We shall suffer for it, depend on it.”

“I don’t know what’s the matter with me to-night,” he replied, “but my brain is running upon all sorts of weird and awful thoughts.  I feel as if I could write a story like Hoffman, to-night, if I were only master of a literary style.”

“Well, if we are going to be Hoffmanesque in our talk, I’m off to bed.  Opium and nightmares should never be brought together.  How sultry it is!  Good-night, Hammond.”

“Good-night, Harry.  Pleasant dreams to you.”

“To you, gloomy wretch, afreets, ghouls, and enchanters.”

We parted, and each sought his respective chamber.  I undressed quickly and got into bed, taking with me, according to my usual custom, a book, over which I generally read myself to sleep.  I opened the volume as soon as I had laid my head upon the pillow, and instantly flung it to the other side of the room.  It was Goudon’s History of Monsters,—­a curious French work, which I had lately imported from Paris, but which, in the state of mind I had then reached, was anything but an agreeable companion.  I resolved to go to sleep at once; so, turning down my gas until nothing but a little blue point of light glimmered on the top of the tube, I composed myself to rest.

The room was in total darkness.  The atom of gas that still remained alight did not illuminate a distance of three inches round the burner.  I desperately drew my arm across my eyes, as if to shut out even the darkness, and tried to think of nothing.  It was in vain.  The confounded themes touched on by Hammond in the garden kept obtruding themselves on my brain.  I battled against them.  I erected ramparts of would-be blackness of intellect to keep them out.  They still crowded upon me.  While I was lying still as a corpse, hoping that by a perfect physical inaction I should hasten mental repose, an awful incident occurred.  A Something dropped, as it seemed, from the ceiling, plumb upon my chest, and the next instant I felt two bony hands encircling my throat, endeavoring to choke me.