I finally got me head into the room and was about to open the lantern, when me thumb slipped upon the fastening, causing the smallest of sounds. At this, the old man sat up in bed, crying out, "Who's there?"

I kept still and said nothing. For nearly an hour I did not move a muscle, and in the meantime, I did naught hear the old man lie down. He be still sitting up in his bed then, listening--just as I have done, night after agonizing night, hearkening to the deathwatches in the wall.

Eventually, I heard a slight groan from the old man and I knew that it were the groan of mortal terror. It be not a groan of pain or grief--oh, no!--it were the low stifled sound that arises from the bottom of a soul when overcharged with fear of the unknown. I knew that sound well. Many a recent night, just at midnight, it has welled up from me own bosom, deepening, with its dreadful echo, the terrors that distracted me. I say I knew it well. I knew what the old man felt and pitied him, although I chuckled deep at heart. I knew that he had been lying awake ever since that first slight noise, when he had turned in his bed. His fears had been growing upon him ever since. He had been trying to fancy them causeless, but could not. Aye, he had been trying to comfort himself, but 'twas all in vain. 'All in vain,' because Death, in approaching the old man, had stalked with his black shadow before him, and that shadow had now reached and enveloped the victim. And it were the mournful influence of the unperceived shadow that caused him to feel--although he neither saw nor heard me--to 'feel' the presence of me head within his room.

When I had waited a long time, very patiently, without hearing the old man lie down, I resolved to open a little--a very, very little--crevice in the lantern cover. So I opened it--you cannot imagine how stealthily, stealthily--until at length, a single dim ray, like the thread of a spider, shot from the crevice and fell full upon that dreaded vulture eye.

The eye--it were open! Wide and 'wide' open--and I grew furious as I gazed upon it. I saw it in perfect clarity--all a dull blue, with a hideous veil over it that chilled the very marrow in me bones; but I could see naught else of the old man's face or person: for I had directed the ray of light as if by instinct, precisely upon that one damned spot.

And now--have I naught told ye that what 'ye' mistake for madness be but an over acuteness of the senses?--now, I say, there came to me ears a low, quick sound. I knew 'that' sound well, too. It were but the beating of the old man's frightened heart! It merely increased me fury, as the beating of a drum stimulates a soldier into courage.

But even yet I refrained from movement and kept perfectly still. I scarcely breathed. I even managed to maintain the ray of light steady upon that eye. Meantime, the hellish tattoo of his heart increased. It grew quicker and louder and 'louder' every instant. The old man's terror must have been extreme! It grew louder, I say, louder every moment!--do ye mark me well? I have told ye that I be nervous--so I am. And now, at the dead hour of the night, and amid the dreadful silence of that old house, so strange a noise as this excited me to an uncontrolled frenzy. Yet, I still refrained from movement. But the beating grew louder, 'louder!' I thought the old heart might burst. And now a new anxiety seized me--this sound would be heard by a neighbor! It were then that I decided the old man's hour had come!