'And there were Six old men upon the stairs!'

Mr. Goodchild having wiped the perspiration from his brow, or tried
to do it, the Two old men proceeded in one voice, and in the
singular number:

'I had been anatomised, but had not yet had my skeleton put
together and re-hung on an iron hook, when it began to be whispered
that the Bride's Chamber was haunted. It WAS haunted, and I was
there.

'WE were there. She and I were there. I, in the chair upon the
hearth; she, a white wreck again, trailing itself towards me on the
floor. But, I was the speaker no more, and the one word that she
said to me from midnight until dawn was, 'Live!'

'The youth was there, likewise. In the tree outside the window.
Coming and going in the moonlight, as the tree bent and gave. He
has, ever since, been there, peeping in at me in my torment;
revealing to me by snatches, in the pale lights and slatey shadows
where he comes and goes, bare-headed--a bill-hook, standing
edgewise in his hair.

'In the Bride's Chamber, every night from midnight until dawn--one
month in the year excepted, as I am going to tell you--he hides in
the tree, and she comes towards me on the floor; always
approaching; never coming nearer; always visible as if by moon-
light, whether the moon shines or no; always saying, from mid-night
until dawn, her one word, "Live!"