for she knew it meant silence, and her dark auguries grew darker.

To my mind there has always been something inexpressibly awful in family
feuds. Mortal hatred seems to deepen and dilate into something diabolical
in these perverted animosities. The mystery of their origin--their
capacity for evolving latent faculties of crime--and the steady vitality
with which they survive the hearse, and speak their deep-mouthed
malignities in every new-born generation, have associated them somehow in
my mind with a spell of life exceeding and distinct from human and a
special Satanic action.

My chamber, as I have mentioned, was upon the third storey. It was one of
many, opening upon the long gallery, which had been the scene, four
generations back, of that unnatural and bloody midnight duel which had
laid one scion of this ancient house in his shroud, and driven another a
fugitive to the moral solitudes of a continental banishment.

Much of the day, as I told you, had been passed among the grisly records
of these old family crimes and hatreds. They had been an ill-conditioned
and not a happy race. When I heard the servant's step traversing that
long gallery, as it seemed to the in haste to be gone, and when all grew
quite silent, I began to feel a dismal sort of sensation, and lighted the
pair of wax candles which I found upon the small writing table. How
wonderful and mysterious is the influence of light! What sort of beings
must those be who hate it?

The floor, more than anything else, showed the great age of the room. It
was warped and arched all along by the wall between the door and the
window. The portion of it which the carpet did not cover showed it to be
oak, dark and rugged. My bed was unexceptionably comfortable, but, in my