My first idea was to pull my
bell, wake the servants, and remove to a garret or a hay-loft, to
be ensured against a second visitation. Nay, I will confess the
truth that my resolution was altered, not by the shame of
exposing myself, but by the fear that, as the bell-cord hung by
the chimney, I might, in making my way to it, be again crossed by
the fiendish hag, who, I figured to myself, might be still
lurking about some corner of the apartment.
"I will not pretend to describe what hot and cold fever-fits
tormented me for the rest of the night, through broken sleep,
weary vigils, and that dubious state which forms the neutral
ground between them. A hundred terrible objects appeared to
haunt me; but there was the great difference betwixt the vision
which I have described, and those which followed, that I knew the
last to be deceptions of my own fancy and over-excited nerves.
"Day at last appeared, and I rose from my bed ill in health and
humiliated in mind. I was ashamed of myself as a man and a
soldier, and still more so at feeling my own extreme desire to
escape from the haunted apartment, which, however, conquered all
other considerations; so that, huddling on my clothes with the
most careless haste, I made my escape from your lordship's
mansion, to seek in the open air some relief to my nervous
system, shaken as it was by this horrible rencounter with a
visitant, for such I must believe her, from the other world.
Pages:
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43