cheek is very pale; his hair long and dishevelled. His beard has grown,
and curls round his face. He has on a sleeping-gown, a long robe as of
one who abides within doors, and has nothing to do with outward
elements; a pair of slippers. A dull, dreamy reverie seems to have
possessed him. Hark! there is again a stealthy step on the floor, and
the serving-man is here again. There is a peering, anxious curiosity in
his face, as he struts towards him, a sort of enjoyment, one would say,
in the way in which he looks at the strange case.

"I am here, you know," he says, at length, after feasting his eyes for
some time on the spectacle.

"I hear you!" says the young man, in a dull, indifferent tone.

"Will not your honor walk out to-day?" says the man. "It is long now
since your honor has taken the air."

"Very long," says the master, "but I will not go out to-day. What
weather is it?"

"Sunny, bright, a summer day," says the man. "But you would never know
it in these damp walls. The last winter's chill is here yet. Had not
your honor better go forth?"

It might seem that there was a sort of sneer, deeply hidden under
respect and obeisance, in the man's words and craftily respectful tone;
deeply hidden, but conveying a more subtile power on that account. At
all events, the master seemed aroused from his state of dull
indifference, and writhed as with poignant anguish--an infused poison
in his veins--as the man spoke.