A hard, gravel walk glistened before me, sweeping around the proud old mansion whose gables I had seen. I entered it, but the gravel hurt my feet, and leaving their little prints in dew upon it, I turned an angle of the building. Now something of terror, a vague, dark, impassable memory seemed floating between me and the stars. A shadow from the building fell over me like a pall. I grew cold and began to shiver, but still moved on toward the moonlight.
It was reached. I looked up, and before me was a great stone doorway, surmounted with masses of dark marble, chiselled so deeply that hollows seemed choked up with shadows which contrasted densely with the moonbeams on the surface. Half a dozen broad, granite steps led to the doorway. I stood upon these steps and looked upward. A strange sensation crept over me. I grew colder, weaker, and sunk upon the stones with my head resting upon the door sill. A rush of confused thoughts crowded upon my brain and stunned it. I lay motionless, but with a vague idea of existence.
The first thing that I remember was confused noises in the dwelling, that sort of bee-like hum which accompanies the uprising of a large household. Sometimes the sound of a door jarred through my whole frame, and then I would drop away into some stage of unconsciousness; it might be the sleep of pure exhaustion, or insensibility, I cannot tell.
At last there was a rustle and rush in the hall, the sound of feet and brooms set in motion, with confused voices and the ponderous movement of a door close to my head, that jarred through and through me. A tumultuous sound of voices followed, a hastily-dropped floor-brush fell across me—laughing, exclamations, bustling and noise; then I heard a woman’s voice say distinctly above the rest, “Ah! here comes one who knows something—he can tell us what it is!”
Then a voice followed that sharpened my faculties like a draught of wine, “Well, what are you chattering about the door-stead for, like so many magpies around a church steeple? Can the housekeeper find you no better business?”
“Oh, come and see for yourself,” answered a peevish voice, “is it a witch, an imp—a—a—do tell us, Mr. Turner, you who have been in foreign parts and know all sorts of outlandish creatures by heart?—look!—look!—its great black eyes are wide open now; you can see them glistening through the hair that lies all sorts of ways over its face. Gracious me, they burn into one like a live coal!”
“Stand back,” said the male voice, “stand back, and let me have room. The creature is human! It may be—it may be—no, no, poor, wild thing—no, no, God forbid!”
The voice was broken, eager and full of anxiety. I felt the long hair parted back from my forehead, and opening my eyes, saw a little, old face, wrinkled and contracted, but oh, how comforting!
“Those great, wild eyes—those lips pinched, blue!—this skeleton frame—no, no, not hers, thank God for that, I could not have borne it!”
“What is the creature?—what shall we do with it?” inquired the female voice.