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At the same moment came again the voice like an awful echo to my words–“Go!” It came so suddenly and so imperatively, almost without any previous warning of the usual shudder, that the shock was more than I could bear. I believe I fainted; I know I found myself, when I came to consciousness, in my arm-chair, cold and numb, and my candles had almost burned down into their sockets.

The next morning I was really ill. A sort of low fever seemed to have prostrated me, and I would have willingly seized so valid a reason for disobeying, at least for that day–for some days, perhaps–the injunction of that ghostly voice. But all that morning it never left me. My fearful chilly fit was of constant recurrence, and the words “Go! go! go!” were murmured so perpetually in my ears–the sound was one of such urgent entreaty–that all force of will gave way completely. Had I remained in that lone room, I should have gone wholly mad. As yet, to my own feelings, I was but partially out of my senses.

I dressed hastily; and, I scarce know how–by no effort of my own will, it seemed to me–I was in the open air. The address of Mary Simms was in a street not far from my own suburb. Without any power of reasoning, I found myself before the door of the house. I knocked, and asked a slipshod girl who opened the door to me for “Miss Simms.” She knew no such person, held a brief shrill colloquy with some female in the back-parlor, and, on coming back, was about to shut the door in my face, when a voice from above–the voice of her I sought–called down the stairs, “Let the gentleman come up!”

I was allowed to pass. In the front drawing-room I found Mary Simms.

“They do not know me under that name,” she said with a mournful smile, and again extended, then withdrew, her hand.

“Sit down,” she went on to say, after a nervous pause. “I am alone now; told I adjure you, if you have still one latent feeling of old kindness for me, explain your words of yesterday to me.”

I muttered something to the effect that I had no explanation to give. No words could be truer; I had not the slightest conception what to say.

“Yes, I am sure you have; you must, you will,” pursued Mary excitedly; “you have some knowledge of that matter.”

“What matter?” I asked.

“Why, the insurance,” she replied impatiently. “You know well what I mean. My mind has been distracted about it. Spite of myself, terrible suspicions have forced themselves on me. No; I don’t mean that,” she cried, suddenly checking herself and changing her tone; “don’t heed what I said; it was madness in me to say what I did. But do, do, do tell me all you know.”

The request was a difficult one to comply with, for I knew nothing. It is impossible to say what might have been the end of this strange interview, in which I began to feel myself an unwilling impostor; but suddenly Mary started.

“The noise of the latchkey in the lock!” she cried, alarmed; “He has returned; he must not see you; you must come another time. Here, here, be quick! I’ll manage him.”

And before I could utter another word she had pushed me into the back drawing-room and closed the door. A man’s step on the stairs; then voices. The man was begging Mary to come out with him, as the day was so fine. She excused herself; he would hear no refusal. At last she appeared to consent, on condition that the man would assist at her toilet. There was a little laughter, almost hysterical on the part of Mary, whose voice evidently quivered with trepidation.

Presently both mounted the upper stairs. Then the thought stuck me that I had left my hat in the front room–a sufficient cause for the woman’s alarm. I opened the door cautiously, seized my hat, and was about to steal down the stairs, when I was again spellbound by that numb cold.