Pagina 412 de 483

While I still hung over her in the agony of despair, I happened

to look up. The windows of the room had before been darkened, and

I felt a kind of panic on seeing the pale yellow light of the

moon illuminate the chamber. The shutters had been thrown back,

and with a sensation of horror not to be described, I saw at the

open window a figure the most hideous and abhorred. A grin was on

the face of the monster; he seemed to jeer, as with his fiendish

finger he pointed towards the corpse of my wife. I rushed towards

the window, and drawing a pistol from my bosom, fired; but he

eluded me, leaped from his station, and running with the

swiftness of lightning, plunged into the lake.