heart beat fast, and to set him listening intently. No sound
stirred in the room but the familiar sound of the rain against the
window, louder and sharper now than he had heard it yet.

Still the vague distrust, the inexpressible dread possessed him,
and kept him to his chair. He had put his carpet-bag on the table,
when he first entered the room; and he now took the key from his
pocket, reached out his hand softly, opened the bag, and groped in
it for his travelling writing-case, in which he knew that there was
a small store of matches. When he had got one of the matches, he
waited before he struck it on the coarse wooden table, and listened
intently again, without knowing why. Still there was no sound in
the room but the steady, ceaseless, rattling sound of the rain.

He lighted the candle again, without another moment of delay and,
on the instant of its burning up, the first object in the room that
his eyes sought for was the curtained bed.

Just before the light had been put out, he had looked in that
direction, and had seen no change, no disarrangement of any sort,
in the folds of the closely-drawn curtains.

When he looked at the bed, now, he saw, hanging over the side of
it, a long white hand.

It lay perfectly motionless, midway on the side of the bed, where
the curtain at the head and the curtain at the foot met. Nothing
more was visible. The clinging curtains hid everything but the
long white hand.