And in he came with eyes of flame,

The fiend to fetch the dead.

SOUTHEY’S Old Woman of Berkeley

Melmoth and Mon?ada did not dare to approach the door till about noon. They then knocked gently at the door, and finding the summons unanswered, they entered slowly and irresolutely. The apartment was in the same state in which they had left it the preceding night, or rather morning; it was dusky and silent, the shutters had not been opened, and the Wanderer still seemed sleeping in his chair.

At the sound of their approach he half-started up, and demanded what was the hour. They told him. ‘My hour is come,’ said the Wanderer, ‘it is an hour you must neither partake or witness — the clock of eternity is about to strike, but its knell must be unheard by mortal ears!’ As he spoke they approached nearer, and saw with horror the change the last few hours had wrought on him. The fearful lustre of his eyes had been deadened before their late interview, but now the lines of extreme age were visible in every feature. His hairs were as white as snow, his mouth had fallen in, the muscles of his face were relaxed and withered — he was the very image of hoary decrepid debility. He started himself at the impression which his appearance visibly made on the intruders. ‘You see what I feel,’ he exclaimed, ‘the hour then is come. I am summoned, and I must obey the summons — my master has other work for me! When a meteor blazes in your atmosphere — when a comet pursues its burning path towards the sun — look up, and perhaps you may think of the spirit condemned to guide the blazing and erratic orb.’

The spirits, that had risen to a kind of wild elation, as suddenly subsided, and he added, ‘Leave me, I must be alone for the few last hours of my mortal existence — if indeed they are to be the last.’ He spoke this with an inward shuddering, that was felt by his hearers. ‘In this apartment,’ he continued, ‘I first drew breath, in this I must perhaps resign it, — would — would I had never been born!

‘Men — retire — leave me alone. Whatever noises you hear in the course of the awful night that is approaching, come not near this apartment, at peril of your lives. Remember,’ raising his voice, which still retained all its powers, ‘remember your lives will be the forfeit of your desperate curiosity. For the same stake I risked more than life — and lost it! — Be warned — retire!’

They retired, and passed the remainder of that day without even thinking of food, from that intense and burning anxiety that seemed to prey on their very vitals. At night they retired, and though each lay down, it was without a thought of repose. Repose indeed would have been impossible. The sounds that soon after midnight began to issue from the apartment of the Wanderer, were at first of a description not to alarm, but they were soon exchanged for others of such indescribable horror, that Melmoth, though he had taken the precaution of dismissing the servants to sleep in the adjacent offices, began to fear that those sounds might reach them, and, restless himself from insupportable inquietude, rose and............