I lay awake some time, as men will do under such circumstances, but at length fatigue overcame me, and I fell into a profound sleep. From this repose I was, however, aroused in the manner I am about to describe. A very considerable interval must have intervened. There was a cold air in the room very unlike the comfortable atmosphere in which I had composed myself to sleep. The fire, though much lower than when I had gone to bed, was still emitting flame enough to throw a flickering light over the chamber. My curtains were, however, closely drawn, and I could not see beyond the narrow tent in which I lay. There had been as I awaked a clanking among the fire-irons, as if a palsied hand was striving to arrange the fire, and this rather unaccountable noise continued for some seconds after I had become completely awake. Under the impression that I was subjected to an accidental intrusion, I called out, first in a gentle and afterward in a sharper tone, "Who's there?" At the second summons the sound ceased, and I heard instead the tread of naked feet, as it seemed to me, upon the floor, pacing to and fro, between the hearth and the bed in which I lay. A superstitious terror, which I could not combat, stole over me; with an effort I repeated my question, and drawing myself upright in the bed, expected the answer with a strange sort of trepidation. It came in terms and accompanied with accessories which I shall not soon forget. The very same tones which had so startled me in the church-yard the evening before, the very sounds which I had heard then and there, were now filling my ears, and spoken in the chamber where I lay. "Why will you trouble the dead? Who can torment us before the time? I will come to you in my flesh, 'though after my skin worms destroy this body,' and you shall speak with me face to face." As I live. I can swear the words and the voice were the very same I had heard on the occasion I have mentioned, but (and mark this) repeated to _no one_. With feelings which I shall not attempt to describe, I heard the speaker approach the bed--a hand parted the bed-curtains and drew them open, revealing a form more horrible than my fancy had ever seen--an almost gigantic figure--naked, except for what might well have been the rotten remnant of a shroud--stood close beside my bed--livid and cadaverous--grimed as it seemed with the dust of the grave, and staring on me with a gaze of despair, malignity, and fury, too intense almost for human endurance. I can not say whether I spoke or not, but this infernal spectre answered me as if I had. "I am dead and yet alive," it said, "the child of perdition--in the grave I am a murderer, but here I am APOLLYON. Fall down and worship me." Having thus spoken, it stood for a moment at the bedside, and then turned away with a shuddering moan, and I lost sight of it, but after a few seconds it came again to the bedside as before.