the snuffers now and trimmed the wick. The light brightened
directly, and the room became less dismal.

Again he turned to the riddles, reading them doggedly and
resolutely, now in one corner of the card, now in another. All
his efforts, however, could not fix his attention on them. He
pursued his occupation mechanically, deriving no sort of
impression from what he was reading. It was as if a shadow from
the curtained bed had got between his mind and the gayly printed
letters--a shadow that nothing could dispel. At last he gave up
the struggle, threw the card from him impatiently, and took to
walking softly up and down the room again.

The dead man, the dead man, the _hidden_ dead man on the bed!

There was the one persistent idea still haunting him. Hidden! Was
it only the body being there, or was it the body being there
_concealed,_ that was preying on his mind? He stopped at the
window with that doubt in him, once more listening to the
pattering rain, once more looking out into the black darkness.

Still the dead man!

The darkness forced his mind back upon itself, and set his memory
at work, reviving with a painfully vivid distinctness the
momentary impression it had received from his first sight of the
corpse. Before long the face seemed to be hovering out in the
middle of the darkness, confronting him through the window, with
the paleness whiter--with the dreadful dull line of light between
the imperfectly-closed eyelids broader than he had seen it--with