Bernardo, Marcellus, and Horatio were met at a late hour to talk over a dreadful apparition that had disturbed the two former on the previous night, when they were startled by the same apparition--a ghost making its appearance. They observed it resembled the king who was dead. Horatio charged it to speak, but it stalked away without deigning a reply. It reappeared, but suddenly vanished on hearing the cock crow. How long elapsed we are not informed; but on a certain night, just after the clock had struck twelve, Hamlet, Horatio, and Marcellus were engaged in earnest conversation when they were alarmed. The first entreats the ghost to say wherefore it visited them. It beckoned to Hamlet to follow it; and he did so, despite those who were with him, and saw the spirit as well as he did. The ghost's tongue was unloosed, and thus it spake: "Lend thy serious hearing to what I shall unfold: My hour is almost come, when I must render up myself to sulphurous and tormenting flames. I am thy father's spirit; and, for the day, confined to fast in fires, till the foul crimes, done in my days of nature, are burnt and purged away. Were I not forbidden to tell the secrets of my prison-house, I could a tale unfold that would harrow up thy soul; freeze thy young blood; make thy eyes start; and make thy locks part like quills upon the fretful porcupine: but this eternal blazon must not be. If ever thou didst love thy father, revenge his foul and most unnatural murder." "Murder!" exclaimed Hamlet. "Murder," said the ghost, "most foul, as in the best it is." "Reveal it," gasped Hamlet, "that I may with swift wings sweep to my revenge." "Thou shouldst be duller than the fat weed that rots itself on Lethe's wharf, wert thou not to stir in this," ejaculated the spirit. The ghost continued: "It has been given out, that, when sleeping in mine orchard, a serpent stung me to death; but know thou that the serpent that did sting thy father now wears his crown.... Sleeping within my orchard, as my custom was in the afternoon, on my secure hour thy uncle stole with cursed juice of hebenon in a vial, and did pour the leprous distilment into mine ears, that curdled my blood. Thus was I, by a brother's hand, despatched from crown and queen; cut off in the blossoms of my sin, unprepared, disappointed, and, without extreme unction, sent to my account with all my imperfections on my head. O, horrible! most horrible! Let not the royal bed be a couch for luxury and damned incest. Farewell; the glow-worm shows the morning to be near, and begins to pale his ineffectual fire: Adieu! Remember me." The king's death was avenged. The treacherous queen, and he who murdered the monarch, drank a poisoned cup, and thus received measure for measure. CHAPTER XVIII.