"Tell me the particulars; explain the whole matter to me. Imagination plays us ghastly tricks sometimes. Were you alone? Was it late?"
"Why didn't I come here this morning?" cried Edgar.
"It was long after midnight. I had received your letter and could not sleep, so I went into the laboratory, as we often do, to walk. It was the first time I had been there since I was ill, and it made me tremble to cross its hated threshold, but I had a question to decide, and I thought I ought to decide it there. But I trembled, as I say, and my hand shook so as I opened the door that I was more disturbed than astonished when my light went suddenly out, leaving me in total darkness. As I was by this time inside the laboratory I did not turn back to relight my candle, for the breeze I presently felt blowing through the room convinced me that this would be idle, and that till the window was shut, which let in such a stream of air, any attempt to bring a light into the room would be attended by the same results. I therefore moved rapidly across the room to the window, and was about to close it when I was suddenly arrested, and my arms were paralyzed by the feeling of a presence in the room behind my back. It was so vivid, so clear to my thoughts, that I seemed to see it, though I did not turn from the window. It was that of an old man—my father's,—and the menace with which the arms were lifted froze the blood in my veins.
"I had merited it; I had been near to breaking his command. I had meditated, if I had not decided, upon a sudden breaking away from the bondage he had imposed upon me; I had been on the point of daring his curse, and now it was to fall upon me. I felt the justice of his presence and fell, as if stricken, on my knees.
"The silence that followed may have been short, and it may have been long. I was almost unconscious from fright, remorse, and apprehension. But when I did rouse and did summon courage to turn and crawl from the room, I was conscious of the thing following me, and would have screamed, but that I had no voice. Suddenly I gave a rush; but the moment I started forward I felt those fingers fall upon my head and draw me back, and when I did escape it was with a force that carried me beyond the door and then laid me senseless on the floor; for I am no longer strong, Mr. Etheridge, and the hatred of the dead is worse than that of the living."
"You had a dream, a fearful dream, and these marks prove its vividness," declared Edgar. "You must not let your life be ruined by any such fantasies."
"Oh, that it had been a dream," moaned Hermione, "but it was more than that, as we can prove."
"Prove?"
"Come to the laboratory," cried Emma, suddenly. "There is something we want to show you there; something which I saw early this morning when I went in to close the window Hermione did not shut."
The young men, startled, did not wait for a second bidding; they followed the two girls immediately up-stairs.