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and the beclouded afternoon was tending to drear twilight. I heard
the rain still beating continuously on the staircase window, and
the wind howling in the grove behind the hall; I grew by degrees
cold as a stone, and then my courage sank. My habitual mood of
humiliation, self-doubt, forlorn depression, fell damp on the embers
of my decaying ire. All said I was wicked, and perhaps I might be
so; what thought had I been but just conceiving of starving myself
to death? That certainly was a crime: and was I fit to die? Or
was the vault under the chancel of Gateshead Church an inviting
bourne? In such vault I had been told did Mr. Reed lie buried;
and led by this thought to recall his idea, I dwelt on it with
gathering dread. I could not remember him; but I knew that he was
my own uncle -- my mother's brother -- that he had taken me when
a parentless infant to his house; and that in his last moments he
had required a promise of Mrs. Reed that she would rear and maintain
me as one of her own children. Mrs. Reed probably considered she
had kept this promise; and so she had, I dare say, as well as her
nature would permit her; but how could she really like an interloper
not of her race, and unconnected with her, after her husband's
death, by any tie? It must have been most irksome to find herself
bound by a hard-wrung pledge to stand in the stead of a parent to
a strange child she could not love, and to see an uncongenial alien
permanently intruded on her own family group.

A singular notion dawned upon me. I doubted not -- never doubted
-- that if Mr. Reed had been alive he would have treated me kindly;
and now, as I sat looking at the white bed and overshadowed walls
-- occasionally also turning a fascinated eye towards the dimly
gleaning mirror -- I began to recall what I had heard of dead men,
troubled in their graves by the violation of their last wishes,
revisiting the earth to punish the perjured and avenge the oppressed;
and I thought Mr. Reed's spirit, harassed by the wrongs of his
sister's child, might quit its abode -- whether in the church vault
or in the unknown world of the departed -- and rise before me in
this chamber. I wiped my tears and hushed my sobs, fearful lest
any sign of violent grief might waken a preternatural voice to
comfort me, or elicit from the gloom some haloed face, bending over
me with strange pity. This idea, consolatory in theory, I felt
would be terrible if realised: with all my might I endeavoured
to stifle it -- I endeavoured to be firm. Shaking my hair from
my eyes, I lifted my head and tried to look boldly round the dark
room; at this moment a light gleamed on the wall. Was it, I asked
myself, a ray from the moon penetrating some aperture in the blind?
No; moonlight was still, and this stirred; while I gazed, it glided
up to the ceiling and quivered over my head. I can now conjecture
readily that this streak of light was, in all likelihood, a gleam

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