the shock. He sate up in his bed, listened, and heard some sentences
spoken vehemently, and gabbled very fast. He thought he distinguished the
words "wretch" and "God"; and there was something so strange in the tone
in which they were spoken, that the man got up and stole noiselessly
through the dressing room, and listened at the door.

He heard him, as he thought, walking in his slippers through the room,
and making his customary arrangements previously to getting into bed. He
knew that his master had a habit of speaking when alone, and concluded
that the accidental breakage of some glass or chimney-ornament had
elicited the volley of words he had heard. Well knowing that, except at
the usual hours, or in obedience to Sir Wynston's bell, nothing more
displeased his master than his presuming to enter his sleeping-apartment
while he was there, the servant quietly retreated, and, perfectly
satisfied that all was right, composed himself to slumber, and was soon
beginning to dose again.

The adventures of the night, however, were not yet over. Waking, as men
sometimes do, without any ascertainable cause; without a start or an
uneasy sensation; without even a disturbance of the attitude of repose,
he opened his eyes and beheld Merton, the servant of whom we have spoken,
standing at a little distance from his bed. The moonlight fell in a clear
flood upon this figure: the man was ghastly pale; there was a blotch of
blood on his face; his hands were clasped upon something which they
nearly concealed; and his eyes, fixed on the servant who had just
awakened, shone in the cold light with a wild and lifeless glitter. This
specter drew close to the side of the bed, and stood for a few moments
there with a look of agony and menace, which startled the newly-awakened
man, who rose upright, and said--