“How many nights is this?” he continued. “Ten, and I seem no nearer—nay, further away, for—ah!” he ejaculated savagely, “there is that wretched coward shrinking again.”
He shivered and looked hastily round as he drew in his breath hard and with a curious catch.
“Good heavens! of what am I afraid? The first amputator, the first explorer into Nature’s hidden paths, where she guards her secrets so religiously—they only felt the same. Have I gone so far only to hesitate to go further?”
He stood shrinking, with his hand clutching the white cloth spread over the table, and his eyes fixed on vacancy.
“Am I—an experienced medical man—to be frightened by a shadow? I say that there is nothing wrong in my researches,” he cried passionately, as if addressing some one in the corner of the vault. “It is for the benefit of posterity. My experiments upon this vile body here are right.
“And yet I feel as if I cannot go further,” he muttered, with the same abject shiver attacking him again; “as if I dared not—as if I must pause, and I have learned so much. I dare not! It is as if the hand of one’s guardian angel were laid upon my breast, and a voice whispered—‘Rash man, pause before it is too late!’”
He caught at the nearest object for support, for he was weak with excitement, and his face looked ghastly in the gloom, as he stood there trembling till he realised what he, the living, had seized to sustain him—a coffin handle—and snatched his fingers away with a cry of horror, to shrink back and rest against the further side of the vault, but only to start away again, for his shoulder was against another coffin.
He glanced at Moredock, but the old man was sleeping heavily, and once more he looked wildly round the vault.
“I cannot go on,” he groaned; “it is too horrible. There is a terror beyond that dark veil which seems to hold me back. I’ll wake him up. This night shall end it all, and I’ll rest in peace, contented with what I know. I dare go no further.”
He drew a long breath, as if relieved, and felt stimulated by his thoughts. It was all so simple to try and leave everything as nearly as possible in its old state, generously recompense the old sexton, and return to his regular course. The proceedings of the past would be the joint secret of Moredock and himself.