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"Not hear it?--yes, I hear it, and have heard it.
Long--long--long--many minutes, many hours, many days, have I heard
it--yet I dared not--oh, pity me, miserable wretch that I am!--I dared
not--I dared not speak! We have put her living in 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 clangor 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 hurryin
my haste? Have I not heard her footstep 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 pannels 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
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