Then again the moments were the small cogs on the wheels of
time, whereby the dark castle in which he sat was rushing ever
towards the light: the cogs were caught and the wheels turned
swiftly, and the time and the darkness sped. He forgot the labour
of waiting. If now and then he fancied a tone through the darkness,
it was to his mind the music-march of the morning to his rescue from
the dungeon of the night.
But that was no musical tone which made the darkness shudder around
him! He sprang to his feet. It was a human groan--a groan as of
one in dire pain, the pain of a soul's agony. It seemed to have
descended the stair to him. The next instant Donal was feeling his
way up--cautiously, as if on each succeeding step he might come
against the man who had groaned. Tales of haunted houses rushed
into his memory. What if he were but pursuing the groan of an actor
in the past--a creature the slave of his own conscious memory--a
mere haunter of the present which he could not influence--one
without physical relation to the embodied, save in the groans he
could yet utter! But it was more in awe than in fear that he went.
Up and up he felt his way, all about him as still as darkness and
the night could make it. A ghostly cold crept through his skin; it
was drawn together as by a gently freezing process; and there was a
pulling at the muscles of his chest, as if his mouth were being
dragged open by a martingale.
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