She started back. The light of the candle on the table
fell full on its face, and showed her--Admiral Bartram.
A long, gray dressing-gown was wrapped round him. His head was
uncovered; his feet were bare. In his left hand he carried his little
basket of keys. He passed Magdalen slowly, his lips whispering without
intermission, his open eyes staring straight before him with the glassy
stare of death. His eyes revealed to her the terrifying truth. He was
walking in his sleep.
The terror of seeing him as she saw him now was not the terror she
had felt when her eyes first lighted on him--an apparition in the
moon-light, a specter in the ghostly Hall. This time she could struggle
against the shock; she could feel the depth of her own fear.
He passed her, and stopped in the middle of the room. Magdalen ventured
near enough to him to be within reach of his voice as he muttered to
himself. She ventured nearer still, and heard the name of her dead
husband fall distinctly from the sleep-walker's lips.
"Noel!" he said, in the low monotonous tones of a dreamer talking in his
sleep, "my good fellow, Noel, take it back again! It worries me day and
night.
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