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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 of her
brother, and in her violent and now final death-agonies, bore him to the
floor a corpse, and a victim to the terrors he had anticipated.
From that chamber, and from that mansion, I fled aghast. The storm
was still abroad in all its wrath as I found myself crossing the old
causeway. Suddenly there shot along the path a wild light, and I turned
to see whence a gleam so unusual could have issued; for the vast house
and its shadows were alone behind me. The radiance was that of the full,
setting, and blood-red moon, which now shone vividly through that once
barely-discernible fissure, of which I have before spoken as extending
from the roof of the building, in a zigzag direction, to the base. While
I gazed, this fissure rapidly widened--there came a fierce breath of
the whirlwind--the entire orb of the satellite burst at once upon my
sight--my brain reeled as I saw the mighty walls rushing asunder--there
was a long tumultuous shouting sound like the voice of a thousand
waters--and the deep and dank tarn at my feet closed sullenly and
silently over the fragments of the "House of Usher."
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