gradually advanced its eyes so close to his, that he could see how
they did not participate in the terrible smile upon its face, but
were a fixed, unalterable, steady horror melted before him and was
gone.

As he stood rooted to the spot, possessed by fear and wonder, and
imagining he heard repeated in melancholy echoes, dying away
fainter and fainter, the words, "Destroy its like in all whom you
approach!" a shrill cry reached his ears. It came, not from the
passages beyond the door, but from another part of the old
building, and sounded like the cry of some one in the dark who had
lost the way.

He looked confusedly upon his hands and limbs, as if to be assured
of his identity, and then shouted in reply, loudly and wildly; for
there was a strangeness and terror upon him, as if he too were
lost.

The cry responding, and being nearer, he caught up the lamp, and
raised a heavy curtain in the wall, by which he was accustomed to
pass into and out of the theatre where he lectured,--which adjoined
his room. Associated with youth and animation, and a high
amphitheatre of faces which his entrance charmed to interest in a
moment, it was a ghostly place when all this life was faded out of
it, and stared upon him like an emblem of Death.

"Halloa!" he cried. "Halloa! This way! Come to the light!"
When, as he held the curtain with one hand, and with the other
raised the lamp and tried to pierce the gloom that filled the
place, something rushed past him into the room like a wild-cat, and