I read on with absorbed attention. I did not hear the dripping on the
roof, nor the patter-patter of the drops from the ceiling, nor the
beating of the storm against the glass. My candles blew in the draught,
and shadows crossed and recrossed the page. Do you remember the book's
closing words?--
"Once, like Lawford in the darkness at Widderstone, he glanced up
sharply across the lamplight at his phantasmagorical shadowy companion,
heard the steady surge of multitudinous rain-drops, like the roar of
Time's winged chariot hurrying near, then he too, with spectacles awry,
bobbed on in his chair, a weary old sentinel on the outskirts of his
friend's denuded battlefield."
"Shadowy companion," "multitudinous rain-drops," "a weary old sentinel,"
"his friend's denuded battlefield"... the words echoed like little
muffled bells in my brain, and it was, I suppose, to their chiming that
I fell into dreamless sleep.
From this I was suddenly roused by the sharp noise of knocking, and
starting up, my book clattering to the floor, I saw facing me, in the
doorway, Semyonov. Twice before he had come to me just like this--out of
the heart of a dreamless sleep.
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