awkward to use. When he closed them on the wick, he closed them a
hair-breadth too low. In an instant the candle was out, and the
room was plunged in pitch darkness.

The one impression which the absence of light immediately
produced on his mind was distrust of the curtained bed--distrust
which shaped itself into no distinct idea, but which was powerful
enough, in its very vagueness, to bind him down to his chair, to
make his heart beat fast, and to set him listening intently. No
sound stirred in the room, but the familiar sound of the rain
against the window, louder and sharper now than he had heard it
yet.

Still the vague distrust, the inexpressible dread possessed him,
and kept him in his chair. He had put his carpet-bag on the table
when he first entered the room, and he now took the key from his
pocket, reached out his hand softly, opened the bag, and groped
in it for his traveling writing-case, in which he knew that there
was a small store of matches. When he had got one of the matches
he waited before he struck it on the coarse wooden table, and
listened intently again without knowing why. Still there was no
sound in the room but the steady, ceaseless rattling sound of the
rain.

He lighted the candle again without another moment of delay, and,
on the instant of its burning up, the first object in the room
that his eyes sought for was the curtained bed.

Just before the light had been put out he had looked in that
direction, and had seen no change, no disarrangement of any sort