Scream followed
scream. Volition or strength, whichever it was that had left me,
returned. I backed from the room, went noiseless from the house, and
fled, as if she had been the ghost, and I the mortal. Would I had been
the spectre for which she took me!"
Here uncle Edward again spoke.
"Small wonder she screamed, the wretch!" he cried: "that was her second
dose of the horrible that night! You found the door unbolted because I
had been there before you. I too entered her room, and saw her asleep as
you describe. I went close to her bedside, and cried out, 'Where is my
brother?' She woke, and fainted, and I left her."
"Then," said I, "when she came to herself, thinking she had had a bad
dream, she rearranged her hair, and went to sleep again!"
"Just so, I daresay, little one!" answered uncle Edward.
"I had not yet begun to think what I should do, when I found myself at
our little inn," the manuscript continues. "No idea of danger to myself
awoke in my mind, nor was there any cause to heed such an idea, had it
come. Nobody there knew the one from the other of us. Not many would know
there were two of us. Any one who saw me twice, might well think he had
seen us both. If my brother's body were found in the valley stream, it
was not likely to be recognized, or to be indeed recognizable. The only
one who could tell what happened at the top of the fall, would hardly
volunteer information.
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