Barefoot, the figure walked towards the kitchen, then turning to the left, it mounted the back stair; the doctor following pretty closely, and Tom with his candle in the rear.
On a peg in the gallery opposite to the door of William Maubray’s bed-room, hung an old dressing-gown of his, into the pocket of which the apparition slipped the papers it had taken from his desk. Then it opened William’s door, as easily as if he had not locked it upon the inside. The doctor and Tom followed, and saw the figure approach the bed and place the desk very neatly under the bolster, then return to the door, and shut and lock it on the inside. Then the figure marched in a stately way to the far side of the bed, drew both curtains, and stood at the bedside, like a ghost, for about a minute; after which it walked in the same stately way to the door, unlocked it, and walked forth again upon the gallery; the doctor still following, and Tom behind, bearing the light. Down the stairs it glided, and halted on the lobby, where it seemed to look from the window fixedly.
“Come along,” said the doctor to Tom; and down the stairs he went, followed by the torch-bearer, and, on reaching the lobby, he clapped the apparition on the back, and shook it lustily by the arm.
With the sort of gasp and sob which accompany sudden immersion in cold water, William Maubray, for the ghost was he, awakened, dropped the coverlet, which formed his drapery, on the floor, and stood the picture of bewilderment and horror, in his night-shirt, staring at his friends and repeating—“Lord have mercy on us!”
“It’s only Tom and I. Shake yourself up a bit, man. Doctor Drake—here we are—all old friends.”
And the doctor spoke very cheerily, and all sorts of encouraging speeches; but it was long before William got out of his horror, and even then he seemed for a good while on the point of fainting.
“I’ll never be myself again,” groaned William, in his night-shirt, seating himself, half dead, upon the lobby table.
Tom stood by, holding the candle aloft, and staring in his face and praying in short sentences, with awful unction; while the doctor kept all the time laughing and patting William on the shoulder and repeating, “Nonsense!—nonsense!—nonsense!”
When William had got again into his room, and had some clothes on, he broke again into talk:
“Somnambulism!—walk in my sleep. I could not have believed it possible. I—I never perceived the slightest tendency—I—the only thing was that catching my own wrist in my sleep and thinking it was another person who held me; but—but actually walking in my sleep, isn’t it frightful?”