You cannot see Charlie, Nelly says;--and you cannot in the quiet parlor
tell Nelly a single one of the many things, which you had hoped to tell
her. She says,--"Charlie has grown so thin and so pale, you would never
know him." You listen to her, but you cannot talk: she asks you what you
have seen, and you begin, for a moment joyously; but when they open the
door of the sick-room, and you hear a faint sigh, you cannot go on. You
sit still, with your hand in Nelly's, and look thoughtfully into the
blaze.
You drop to sleep after that day's fatigue, with singular and perplexed
fancies haunting you; and when you wake up with a shudder in the middle
of the night, you have a fancy that Charlie is really dead: you dream of
seeing him pale and thin, as Nelly described him, and with the starched
grave-clothes on him. You toss over in your bed, and grow hot and
feverish. You cannot sleep; and you get up stealthily, and creep
down-stairs. A light is burning in the hall: the bedroom-door stands
half open, and you listen--fancying you hear a whisper. You steal on
through the hall, and edge around the side of the door. A little lamp is
flickering on the hearth, and the gaunt shadow of the bedstead lies dark
upon the ceiling.
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