Page:Salem - a tale of the seventeenth century (IA taleseventeenth00derbrich).pdf/220

 to rise and confuse and almost suffocate her, and all the while a strange, weird sound, half tempest, half music, seemed to pursue and surround her.

Gasping, panting, breathless, and oppressed, she struggled with this fearful sort of nightmare—now half reviving to consciousness, now again sinking down into a sort of conscious stupor, until at length, when the sense of oppression became absolutely unbearable, she suddenly started and awoke—awoke to the full conviction that some one or something was in the room with her.

For one moment she lay in mute, helpless mental bewilderment, bathed from head to foot with the cold dew of terror, and doubtful even where she was—doubtful if she were still asleep or awake—for the closely shut room was too entirely dark to enable her to discover even the faintest outline of familiar things; and still she was conscious of the same warm, sweet, sickening odor, and still sounding in her ears was the same weird, mysterious music; was it in the room or out of it? she could not tell. It was a low, sweet, wailing symphony—unutterably sad;