(There was yet one more among the absent—­one from whose approach the death-bed must be kept sacred; one, whose evil presence was to be dreaded as a pestilence and a scourge.  Mannion!—­where was Mannion?)

I sat by the window, resigned to wait in loneliness till the end came, watching mechanically the vacant eyes that ever watched me—­when, suddenly, the face of Margaret seemed to fade out of my sight.  I started and looked round.  The candle, which I had placed at the opposite end of the room, had burnt down without my noticing it, and was now expiring in the socket.  I ran to light the fresh candle which lay on the table by its side, but was too late.  The wick flickered its last; the room was left in darkness.

While I felt among the different objects under my hands for a box of matches:  Margaret’s voice strengthened again.

“Innocent! innocent!” I heard her cry mournfully through the darkness.  “I’ll swear I’m innocent, and father is sure to swear it too.  Innocent Margaret!  Oh, me! what innocence!”

She repeated these words over and over again, till the hearing them seemed to bewilder all my senses.  I hardly knew what I touched.  Suddenly, my searching hands stopped of themselves, I could not tell why.  Was there some change in the room?  Was there more air in it, as if a door had been opened?  Was there something moving over the floor?  Had Margaret left her bed?—­No! the mournful voice was speaking unintermittingly, and speaking from the same distance.

I moved to search for the matches on a chest of drawers, which stood near the window.  Though the morning was at its darkest, and the house stood midway between two gas-lamps, there was a glimmering of light in this place.  I looked back into the room from the window, and thought I saw something shadowy moving near the bed.  “Take him away!” I heard Margaret scream in her wildest tones.  “His hands are on me:  he’s feeling my face, to feel if I’m dead!”

I ran to her, striking against some piece of furniture in the darkness.  Something passed swiftly between me and the bed, as I got near it.  I thought I heard a door close.  Then there was silence for a moment; and then, as I stretched out my hands, my right hand encountered the little table placed by Margaret’s side, and the next moment I felt the match-box that had been left on it.

As I struck a light, her voice repeated close at my ear: 

“His hands are on me:  he’s feeling my face to feel if I’m dead!”

The match flared up.  As I carried it to the candle, I looked round, and noticed for the first time that there was a second door, at the further corner of the room, which lighted some inner apartment through glass panes at the top.  When I tried this door, it was locked on the inside, and the room beyond was dark.

Dark and silent.  But was no one there, hidden in that darkness and silence?  Was there any doubt now, that stealthy feet had approached Margaret, that stealthy hands had touched her, while the room was in obscurity?—­ Doubt?  There was none on that point, none on any other.  Suspicion shaped itself into conviction in an instant, and identified the stranger who had passed in the darkness between me and the bedside, with the man whose presence I had dreaded, as the presence of an evil spirit in the chamber of death.