“There it is!—­there it is!” she shrieked, pointing; “God in heaven! can’t you see it?”

And there indeed it was!—­a human figure, dimly discernible in the gloom—­a figure that wavered from side to side as if about to fall, clutching at the wine-casks for support, had stepped unsteadily forward and for one moment stood revealed in the light of our remaining candles; then it surged heavily and fell prone upon the earth.  In that moment we had all recognized the figure, the face and bearing of our father—­dead these ten months and buried by our own hands!—­our father indubitably risen and ghastly drunk!

On the incidents of our precipitate flight from that horrible place—­on the extinction of all human sentiment in that tumultuous, mad scramble up the damp and mouldy stairs—­slipping, falling, pulling one another down and clambering over one another’s back—­the lights extinguished, babes trampled beneath the feet of their strong brothers and hurled backward to death by a mother’s arm!—­on all this I do not dare to dwell.  My mother, my eldest brother and sister and I escaped; the others remained below, to perish of their wounds, or of their terror—­some, perhaps, by flame.  For within an hour we four, hastily gathering together what money and jewels we had and what clothing we could carry, fired the dwelling and fled by its light into the hills.  We did not even pause to collect the insurance, and my dear mother said on her death-bed, years afterward in a distant land, that this was the only sin of omission that lay upon her conscience.  Her confessor, a holy man, assured her that under the circumstances Heaven would pardon the neglect.

About ten years after our removal from the scenes of my childhood I, then a prosperous forger, returned in disguise to the spot with a view to obtaining, if possible, some treasure belonging to us, which had been buried in the cellar.  I may say that I was unsuccessful:  the discovery of many human bones in the ruins had set the authorities digging for more.  They had found the treasure and had kept it for their honesty.  The house had not been rebuilt; the whole suburb was, in fact, a desolation.  So many unearthly sights and sounds had been reported thereabout that nobody would live there.  As there was none to question nor molest, I resolved to gratify my filial piety by gazing once more upon the face of my beloved father, if indeed our eyes had deceived us and he was still in his grave.  I remembered, too, that he had always worn an enormous diamond ring, and never having seen it nor heard of it since his death, I had reason to think he might have been buried in it.  Procuring a spade, I soon located the grave in what had been the backyard and began digging.  When I had got down about four feet the whole bottom fell out of the grave and I was precipitated into a large drain, falling through a long hole in its crumbling arch.  There was no body, nor any vestige of one.