has come every disease, as from Man’s egotism, unbelief and selfishness have sprung all the crimes in the calendar.”  I paused here, for it seemed to me that it was getting dark,—­at any rate I could not see to read very clearly.  I looked at the window, but very little light came through it,—­a sudden obscurity, like a heavy cloud, darkened all visible things.  I quickly made up my mind that I would not yield to any more fanciful terrors, or leave the room, even if I saw another outlet that night.  With this determination I undressed quickly and went to bed.  As I laid my head on the pillow I felt a kind of coldness in the air which made me shiver a little—­an ‘uncanny’ sensation to which I would not yield.  I saw the darkness thickening round me, and closed my eyes, resolving to rest—­and so succeeded in ordering all my faculties to this end that within a very few minutes I was soundly asleep.

XIX

THE UNKNOWN DEEP

My slumber was so profound and dreamless that I have no idea how long it lasted, but when finally I awoke it was with a sense of the most vivid and appalling terror.  Every nerve in my body seemed paralysed—­I could not move or cry out,—­invisible bands stronger than iron held me a prisoner on my bed—­and I could only stare upwards in horror as a victim bound to the rack might stare at the pitiless faces of his torturers.  A Figure, tall, massive and clothed in black, stood beside me—­I could not see its face—­but I felt its eyes gazing down upon me with a remorseless, cold inquisitiveness—­a silent, searching enquiry which answered itself without words.  If every thought in my brain and every emotion of my soul could have been cut out of me with a dissecting knife and laid bare to outward inspection, those terrible eyes, probing deep into the very innermost recesses of my being, would have done the work.

The beating of my heart sounded loud and insistent in my own ears,—­ I lay still, trying to gain control over my trembling spirit,—­and it was almost with an awful sense of relief that I saw the figure move at last from its rigid attitude and beckon me—­beckon slowly and commandingly with one outstretched arm from which the black, dank draperies hung like drifting cloud.  Mechanically obeying the signal, I strove to rise from my bed—­and found that I could do so,- -I sat up shiveringly, looking at the terrifying Form that towered above me, enclosing me as it were in its own shadow—­and then, managing to stand on my feet, though unsteadily, I mutely prepared to follow where it should lead.  It moved on—­and I went after it, compelled by some overpowering instinct against which I dared not rebel.  Once the vague, half-formed thought flitted through my brain--"This is Death that summons me away,”—­till with the thought came the remembrance that according to the schooling I was receiving, there is no such thing as ‘Death,’ but only the imaginary phantom we call by that name.