his bass voice as before:

"And on his soul may God ha' mercy!"

All this time the third stranger had been standing in the doorway.
Finding now that he did not come forward or go on speaking, the
guests particularly regarded him. They noticed, to their surprise,
that he stood before them the picture of abject terror-his knees
trembling, his hand shaking so violently that the door-latch, by
which he supported himself, rattled audibly; his white lips were
parted, and his eyes fixed on the merry officer of justice in the
middle of the room. A moment more, and he had turned, closed the
door, and fled.

"What a man can it be?" said the shepherd.

The rest, between the awfulness of their late discovery and the odd
conduct of this third visitor, looked as if they knew not what to
think, and said nothing. Instinctively they withdrew farther and
farther from the grim gentleman in their midst, whom some of them
seemed to take for the prince of darkness himself, till they formed
a remote circle, an empty space of floor being left between them
and him--

"Circulus, cujus centrum diabolus."

The room was so silent--though there were more than twenty people
in it--that nothing could be heard but the patter of the rain against
the window-shutters, accompanied by the occasional hiss of a stray
drop that fell down the chimney into the fire, and the steady