I felt sure that something had
moved at the top of the aisle. I strained in the darkness, to hark; and
my eyes showed me blackness within blackness, wherever I glanced, so that
I took no heed of what they told me; for even if I looked at the dim loom
of the stained window at the top of the chancel, my sight gave me the
shapes of vague shadows passing noiseless and ghostly across, constantly.
There was a time of almost peculiar silence, horrible to me, as I felt
just then. And suddenly I seemed to hear a sound again, nearer to me, and
repeated, infinitely stealthy. It was as if a vast, soft tread were
coming slowly down the aisle.
"Can you imagine how I felt? I do not think you can. I did not move, any
more than the stone effigies on the two tombs; but sat there,
_stiffened_. I fancied now, that I heard the tread all about the Chapel.
And then, you know, I was just as sure in a moment that I could not hear
it--that I had never heard it.
"Some particularly long minutes passed, about this time; but I think my
nerves must have quieted a bit; for I remember being sufficiently aware
of my feelings, to realize that the muscles of my shoulders _ached_, with
the way that they must have been contracted, as I sat there, hunching
myself, rigid. Mind you, I was still in a disgusting funk; but what I
might call the 'imminent sense of danger' seemed to have eased from
around me; at any rate, I felt, in some curious fashion, that there was a
respite--a temporary cessation of malignity from about me.
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