Donal came to himself. He concluded it was a case of sleepwalking.
He had read that it was dangerous to wake the sleeper, but that he
seldom came to mischief when left alone, and was about to slip away
as he had come, when the faint sound of a far-off chord crept
through the silence. The earl again laid his ear to the wall. But
there was only silence. He went through the same dumb show as
before, then turned as if to leave the place. Donal turned also,
and hurriedly felt his way to the stair. Then first he was in
danger of terror; for in stealing through the darkness from one who
could find his way without his eyes, he seemed pursued by a creature
not of this world. On the stair he went down a step or two, then
lingered, and heard the earl come on it also. He crept close to the
newel, leaving the great width of the stair free, but the steps of
the earl went upward. Donal descended, sat down again at the bottom
of the stair, and began again to wait. No sound came to him through
the rest of the night. The slow hours rolled away, and the slow
light drew nearer. Now and then he was on the point of falling into
a doze, but would suddenly start wide awake, listening through a
silence that seemed to fill the whole universe and deepen around the
castle.
At length he was aware that the darkness had, unobserved of him,
grown weaker--that the approach of the light was sickening it: the
dayspring was about to take hold of the ends of the earth that the
wicked might be shaken out of its lap.
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