"I used to come here at night and wander as near to the house as I
safely could. The place dogged me, sleeping and waking. That library was
an ever-present memory. I have sat in my lonely rooms till I could
endure the horrors of imagination no longer, and been forced to come
from London that I might look at this terrible house, with the silent
river flowing sullenly past its desolate gardens.
"Life seemed ebbing away from me. I saw that day by day the blood left
my cheeks. I looked at my hands, and beheld they were becoming like
those of some one very aged. My lameness grew perceptible to others as
well as to me, and I could distinguish, as I walked in the sunshine, the
shadow my figure threw was that of one deformed. I grew weak, and worn,
and tired, yet I never thoroughly lost heart till I knew you had come
here to unravel the secret.
"'And it will be revealed to him,' I thought, 'if I do not kill him
too.'
"You have been within an ace of death often and often since you set
yourself this task, but at the last instant my heart always failed me.
"Well, you are to live, and I to die. It was to be so, I suppose; but
you will never be nearer your last moment, till you lie a corpse, than
you have been twice, at any rate."
Then I understood how accurately Munro had judged when he warned me to
be on my guard against this man--now harmless and dying, but so recently
desperate and all-powerful for evil; and as I recalled the nights I had
spent in that desolate house, I shivered.
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