Finally the talk with his sister had excited his imagination, and driven sleep from his eyelids.

In vain he turned and twisted in his bed, or paced the floor of his chamber.

He was not only awake, but abnormally awake, with every nerve highly strung, and every sense at the keenest.

What was he to do to gain a little sleep?
It flashed across him that there was brandy in the decanter downstairs, and that a glass might act as a sedative.
He had opened the door of his room, when suddenly his ear caught the sound of slow and stealthy footsteps upon the stairs.

His own lamp was unlit, but a dim glimmer came from a moving taper, and a long black shadow travelled down the wall.