hereditary thread that ancestor after ancestor had handed down--might
seem ready to join on. He felt as if they were the two points of an
electric chain, which being joined, an instantaneous effect must follow.
Earnestly, as he would have looked forward to this moment (had he in
sober reason ever put any real weight on the fantasy in pursuit of which
he had wandered so far) he now, that it actually appeared to be realizing
itself, paused with a vague sensation of alarm. The mystery was evidently
one of sorrow, if not of crime, and he felt as if that sorrow and crime
might not have been annihilated even by being buried out of human sight
and remembrance so long. He remembered to have heard or read, how that
once an old pit had been dug open, in which were found the remains of
persons that, as the shuddering by-standers traditionally remembered, had
died of an ancient pestilence; and out of that old grave had come a new
plague, that slew the far-off progeny of those who had first died by it.
Might not some fatal treasure like this, in a moral view, be brought to
light by the secret into which he had so strangely been drawn? Such were
the fantasies with which he awaited the return of Alice, whose light
footsteps sounded afar along the passages of the old mansion; and then
all was silent.

At length he heard the sound, a great way off, as he concluded, of her
returning footstep, approaching from chamber to chamber, and along the
staircases, closing the doors behind her. At first, he paid no great
attention to the character of these sounds, but as they drew nearer, he
became aware that the footstep was unlike those of Alice; indeed, as
unlike as could be, very regular, slow, yet not firm, so that it seemed
to be that of an aged person, sauntering listlessly through the rooms. We
have often alluded to Middleton's sensitiveness, and the quick vibrations
of his sympathies; and there was something in this slow approach that
produced a strange feeling within him; so that he stood breathlessly,