“All Monday night, as I lay tossing upon a bed of pain, when fever was coursing through my veins, and every pulse went plunging like a steam engine from the gorged heart to every extremity, and my brain was like molten lead, I heard that terrible bark!  It was my evil genius, my destiny.  It mingled in every feverish dream, became the embodiment of every vision.  I measured the periods of its recurrence by the clock that stands in the corner of our room.  I counted the tickings of its silence, and I counted the tickings of its continuance.  Every swing of the pendulum became a distinct period of existence.  Minutes, hours, were nothing.  Forty-four tickings, I said, and that bow, wow! will be heard again!  Fifteen tickings, I said, and it will cease; and so I went on until the hours seemed to spread out into a boundless ocean of time.  That dog somehow became mixed up with that old family clock that stood in the corner.  I heard him scratching and climbing up among the weights, writhing and twisting his way among the machinery, till there, looking out through the face of that old family clock, distinct and palpable as the sun at noonday, or the moon in a cloudless night, I saw the ogre head of that dog; his great glassy, fishy eyes, his half drooping, half erect ears, his slavering jaws, and as he gazed in a stupid meaningless stare upon me, uttered his everlasting bow, wow!  Tell me that the room was dark; that not a ray of light penetrated the closed doors or the curtained windows.  What of that?  That dog’s head, I repeat, was there; I saw it, if I ever saw the sun, the moon or the bright stars.  I saw it staring at me through all the gloom, all the thick darkness, and I heard its terrible bow, wow!  ‘Get out!’ I shouted in horror.

“‘What’s the matter?’ cried my wife, springing up in an ecstasy of terror.

“‘Drive out that dog,’ I replied.

“‘What dog?’ she inquired.

“‘There,’ I replied, ’that dog there, in the clock with his great staring, glassy eyes; drive him out!’

“She lighted the gas, and as it flashed up, there stood the old clock, the pendulum swung back and forth, the ticking went on, and its white old-fashioned face, looked out in calm serenity; but the dog was gone.  It was all natural as life.  The lighting of the gas had frightened the cur back to his yard, and as the forty-fourth tick ceased, his bow wow! was heard again, and it lasted while the pendulum swung back and forth just fifteen times.  I took a cooling draft, and counted in feverish agony forty-four, and fifteen, till the daylight came creeping in at the windows, filling with sepulchral greyness the room.  The barking ceased, and I slept only to dream of snarling curs and ‘dirty dogs’ for an hour.