Page:Salem - a tale of the seventeenth century (IA taleseventeenth00derbrich).pdf/222

 the strange music had died away into silence, and in the awful stillness she could hear the fierce beating of her own heart—beat, beat, beat! She felt as if the life-blood thus violently pumped up must break in hemorrhage over her parched and stiffening lips.

Another desperate effort, and she has darted across the room and gained the chamber door. She will call for help; her trembling hand is feeling for the latch; she has found it—she has torn it open; a figure stood just beyond the threshold, and, with a wild, glad cry—"Oh, William!"—she was springing forward to the shelter of her husband's arms—but, merciful heavens! that tall, vague, shrouded figure, dimly revealed to her by the hall window just behind him, is not her husband! not her husband's the cold, damp, clammy hand that firmly clutched her wrist, and held her one moment forcibly in the doorway, then sternly thrust her back into the chamber, closing the door between them.

Quick as thought, with rare presence of mind, the trembling woman shot the bolt of the door. One terror at least was thus shut