The deep-drawn breathings of the sleepers around us; the unbroken stillness of the night; the fast-expiring embers, which only flickered at intervals,--contributed their aid to make the story more deeply affecting; and I sat pondering over it, and canvassing within my mind all the probabilities of the condemned man's guilt or innocence; nor, I must own it, were all my convictions on the side of the narrator's belief; but even that very doubt heightened the interest considerably. As for Cullinane, his thoughts were evidently less with the incidents of the characters as they lived, than with that long pilgrimage of expiation, in which his imagination pictured his poor relative still a wanderer beyond the grave. The fire now barely flickered, throwing from time to time little jets of light upon the sleeping figures around us, and then leaving all in dark indistinctness. My companion also, crouching down, hid his face within his hands, and either slept or was lost in deep thought, and I alone of all the party was left awake, my mind dwelling on the tale I had just heard, with a degree of interest to which the place and the hour strongly contributed. I had been for some time thus, when the sound of feet moving heavily overhead attracted my attention; they were like the sluggish footsteps of age, but passing to and fro with what seemed haste and eagerness. I could hear a voice, too, which even in its indistinctness I recognized as that of the old woman; and once or twice fancied I could detect another, whose accents sounded like pain and suffering. The shuffling footsteps still continued, and I heard the old crazy sash of the window open, and after an interval shut again, while I distinctly could catch the old hag's voice saying, "It 's all dark without; there 's no use 'trying'!" a low whining sound followed; and then I heard the old woman slowly descending the stairs, and, by the motion of her hand along the wall, I conjectured that she had no light. She stopped as she came to the door, and seemed to listen to the long-drawn breathing of the sleepers; and then she pushed open the door and entered. With a strange dread of what this might mean, I still resolved to let the event take its course; and, feigning deepest sleep, I lay back against the wall and watched her well.