It came slowly
onward, and I advanced as slowly to meet it; yet, when we came
within speech, I still knew not who it was. It bore the figure, air,
and features of my late brother, I thought, exactly; yet in all these
there were traits so forbidding, so mixed with an appearance of
misery, chagrin and despair, that I still shrunk from the view, not
knowing in whose face I looked. But, when the being spoke, both
my mental and bodily frame received another shock more terrible
than the first, for it was the voice of the great personage I had so
long denominated my friend, of whom I had deemed myself for
ever freed, and whose presence and counsels I now dreaded more
than Hell. It was his voice, but so altered--I shall never forget it
till my dying day. Nay, I can scarce conceive it possible that any
earthly sounds could be so discordant, so repulsive to every
feeling of a human soul, as the tones of the voice that grated on
my ear at that moment. They were the sounds of the pit, wheezed
through a grated cranny, or seemed so to my distempered
imagination.
"So! Thou shudderest at my approach now, dost thou?" said he.
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