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the tomb! Said I not that my senses were acute? I now tell
you that I heard her first feeble movements in the hollow coffin.
I heard them--many, many days ago--yet I dared not--I dared
not speak! And now--to-night--Ethelred--ha! ha!--the breaking
of the hermit's door, and the death-cry of the dragon, and the
clangour of the shield!--say, rather, the rending of her coffin,
and the grating of the iron hinges of her prison, and her
struggles within the coppered archway of the vault! Oh whither
shall I fly? Will she not be here anon? Is she not hurrying to
upbraid me for my haste? Have I not heard her footsteps on the
stair? Do I not distinguish that heavy and horrible beating of
her heart? Madman!" here he sprang furiously to his feet, and
shrieked out his syllables, as if in the effort he were giving up
his soul--"Madman! I tell you that she now stands without the
door!"
As if in the superhuman energy of his utterance there had
been found the potency of a spell--the huge antique panels to
which the speaker pointed, threw slowly back, upon the instant,
their ponderous and ebony jaws. It was the work of the
rushing gust--but then without those doors there DID stand the
lofty and enshrouded figure of the lady Madeline of Usher. There
was blood upon her white robes, and the evidence of some bitter
struggle upon every portion of her emaciated frame. For a moment
she remained trembling and reeling to and fro upon the threshold,--
then, with a low moaning cry, fell heavily inward upon the person
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