I walked up and down my room, whistling in turn martial and hilarious
music, and listening ever and anon for the dreaded noise. I sate down
and stared at the square label on the solemn and reserved-looking black
bottle, until "FLANAGAN & CO'S BEST OLD MALT WHISKY" grew into a sort of
subdued accompaniment to all the fantastic and horrible speculations
which chased one another through my brain.

Silence, meanwhile, grew more silent, and darkness darker. I listened in
vain for the rumble of a vehicle, or the dull clamour of a distant row.
There was nothing but the sound of a rising wind, which had succeeded
the thunder-storm that had travelled over the Dublin mountains quite out
of hearing. In the middle of this great city I began to feel myself
alone with nature, and Heaven knows what beside. My courage was ebbing.
Punch, however, which makes beasts of so many, made a man of me
again--just in time to hear with tolerable nerve and firmness the lumpy,
flabby, naked feet deliberately descending the stairs again.

I took a candle, not without a tremour. As I crossed the floor I tried
to extemporise a prayer, but stopped short to listen, and never finished
it. The steps continued. I confess I hesitated for some seconds at the
door before I took heart of grace and opened it. When I peeped out the
lobby was perfectly empty--there was no monster standing on the
staircase; and as the detested sound ceased, I was reassured enough to
venture forward nearly to the banisters. Horror of horrors! within a
stair or two beneath the spot where I stood the unearthly tread smote
the floor. My eye caught something in motion; it was about the size of
Goliah's foot--it was grey, heavy, and flapped with a dead weight from
one step to another. As I am alive, it was the most monstrous grey rat I
ever beheld or imagined.