As they passed out and shut the heavy door, which, however
carefully withheld, fired a long train of thundering reverberations
when it shut at last, the room turned darker.

As he fell a musing in his chair alone, the healthy holly withered
on the wall, and dropped--dead branches.

As the gloom and shadow thickened behind him, in that place where
it had been gathering so darkly, it took, by slow degrees,--or out
of it there came, by some unreal, unsubstantial process--not to be
traced by any human sense,--an awful likeness of himself!

Ghastly and cold, colourless in its leaden face and hands, but with
his features, and his bright eyes, and his grizzled hair, and
dressed in the gloomy shadow of his dress, it came into his
terrible appearance of existence, motionless, without a sound. As
HE leaned his arm upon the elbow of his chair, ruminating before
the fire, IT leaned upon the chair-back, close above him, with its
appalling copy of his face looking where his face looked, and
bearing the expression his face bore.

This, then, was the Something that had passed and gone already.
This was the dread companion of the haunted man!

It took, for some moments, no more apparent heed of him, than he of
it. The Christmas Waits were playing somewhere in the distance,
and, through his thoughtfulness, he seemed to listen to the music.
It seemed to listen too.