I found myself again sitting in the library, and again sitting there alone. It seemed that I had newly awakened from a confused and exciting dream. I knew that it was now midnight, and I was well aware that since the setting of the sun Berenice had been interred. But of that dreary period which had intervened I had no positive, at least no definite comprehension. Yet its memory was rife with horror--horror more horrible from being vague, and terror more terrible from ambiguity. It was a fearful page in the record of my existence, written all over with dim, and hideous, and unintelligible recollections. I strived to decypher them, but in vain--while ever and anon, like the spirit of a departed sound, the shrill and piercing shriek of a female voice seemed to be ringing in my ears. I had done a deed--what was it? And the echoes of the chamber answered me "what was it?" On the table beside me burned a lamp, and near it lay a little box of ebony. It was a box of no remarkable character, and I had seen it frequently before, it being the property of the family physician; but how came it _there_ upon my table, and why did I shudder in regarding it? These were things in no manner to be accounted for, and my eyes at length dropped to the open pages of a book, and to a sentence underscored therein. The words were the singular, but simple words of the poet Ebn Zaiat. "_Dicebant mihi sodales si sepulchrum amicæ visitarem curas meas aliquantulum fore levatas._"[2] Why then, as I perused them, did the hairs of my head erect themselves on end, and the blood of my body congeal within my veins? [Footnote 2: My companions told me I might find some little alleviation of my misery, in visiting the grave of my beloved.] There came a light tap at the library door, and, pale as the tenant of a tomb, a menial entered upon tiptoe. His looks were wild with terror, and he spoke to me in a voice tremulous, husky, and very low. What said he?--some broken sentences I heard. He told of a wild cry heard in the silence of the night--of the gathering together of the household--of a search in the direction of the sound--and then his tones grew thrillingly distinct as he whispered me of a violated grave--of a disfigured body discovered upon its margin--a body enshrouded, yet still breathing, still palpitating, still alive!