h night, the narrator proceeded to the old man's room as usual; however, on this night, something was different. "Never before that night had I felt the extent of my powers--of my sagacity....To think that I was, opening the door, little by little, and he not even to dream of my secret deeds or thoughts. I fairly chuckled at the idea; and perhaps he heard me; for he moved on the bed suddenly, as if startled. Now you may think that I drew back--but no. His room was as black as pitch...so I knew that he could not see the opening of the door....I had my head in, and was about to open the lantern, when my thumb slipped upon the tin fastening...the old man sprang up in bed, crying out--'Who's there?'" The narrator kept quiet, and did not move for an entire hour. The old man did not lie back down; he was sitting up. Even in that darkness, "I knew that he had been lying awake ever since the first slight noise....His fears had been ever since growing upon him. He had been trying to fancy them causeless, but could not." "When I had waited a long time, very patiently...I resolved to open a little--a very, very little crevice in the lantern. So I opened it--you cannot imagine how stealthily, stealthily--until, at length, a single dim ray, like the thread of a spider, shot from out the crevice and fell full upon the vulture eye." The eye was wide open. "I saw it with perfect distinctness--all a dull blue, with a hideous veil over it that chilled the very marrow in my bones....[N]othing else of the old man's face or person [could be seen]." "And now have I not told you that what you mistake for madness is but over-acuteness of the senses?" For at that moment, the narrator heard the sound such as a watch would make when it is enveloped in cotton. "I knew that sound well too. It was the beating of the old man's heart....It increased my fury....But even yet I refrained and kept still." The heartbeat grew "...quicker and quicker, and louder and louder e...
