"What are the visions which haunt the murderer's bed," I thought, "but phantoms of the past recalled by memory and conscience, and invested with an actual presence in sleep?"
Dr. Young, that melancholy dreamer of sublime dreams, has said--
"If dreams infest the grave, I wake emerging from a sea of dreams."
What a terrible idea of future punishment is contained in these words to one, whose sleep like mine is haunted by unutterable terrors! Think of an eternity of dreaming horrors. A hell condensed within the narrow resting-place of the grave.
My reveries were abruptly dispelled by the sound of steps along the passage which led to my chamber. My heart began to beat audibly. It was the dead hour of the night--who could be waking at such an unusual time? I sat up in the bed and listened.
I heard voices: two persons were talking in a loud tone in the passage, that was certain. For a long time, I could not distinguish one word from another, until my own name was suddenly pronounced in a louder key; and in a voice which seemed perfectly familiar to my ears.
The garret in which I slept, was a long, low, dingy apartment which formed a sort of repository for all the worn-out law books and waste papers belonging to the office, and as I have before stated the only furniture it possessed, was a mean truckle-bed on which I slept, and a large iron chest, which Mr. Moncton had informed me, contained title-deeds and other valuable papers, of which he himself kept the key.
They were kept in my apartment for better security; as the stair which led to the flat roof of the house opened into that chamber, and in case of fire, the chest and its contents could be easily removed.
For a wonder, I had never felt the least curiosity about the chest and its contents.
It stood in the old place, the day I first entered that dismal apartment when a child; and during the many long years which had slowly intervened, I never recollected having seen it unclosed. My attention for the first time was drawn to its existence by hearing my uncle say to some one in the passage in a hurried under tone.
"Set your mind at rest, the paper is in the iron chest in that room. If you will not rely upon my promise to destroy it, I will burn it before your eyes."