"You have been there and know what the place is, but no one but
myself can ever realize what it was for me, still loving, still
clinging to a wild inconsequent belief in my wife, to grope in that
mouth of hell for the spring she had chattered about in her sleep,
to find it, press it, and then to hear, down in the dark of the
fearsome recess, the sound of something deadly strike against what
I took to be the cushions of the old settle standing at the edge
of the library hearthstone.
"I think I must have fainted. For when I found myself possessed
of sufficient consciousness to withdraw from that hole of death,
the candle in the candelabrum was shorter by an inch than when I
first thrust my head into the gap made by the removed drawers.
In putting back the drawers I hit the candelabrum with my foot,
upsetting it and throwing out the burning candle. As the flames
began to lick the worm-eaten boarding of the floor a momentary
impulse seized me to rush away and leave the whole place to burn.
But I did not. With a sudden frenzy, I stamped out the flame,
and then finding myself in darkness, griped my way downstairs and
out. If I entered the library I do not remember it. Some lapses
must be pardoned a man involved as I was."
"But the fact which you dismiss so lightly is an important one,"
insisted the major.
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