I continued the story:

      “But the good champion Ethelred, now entering within the door,
      was sore enraged and amazed to perceive no signal of the
      maliceful hermit; but, in the stead thereof, a dragon of a scaly
      and prodigious demeanor, and of a fiery tongue, which sate in
      guard before a palace of gold, with a floor of silver; and upon
      the wall there hung a shield of shining brass with this legend
      enwritten—

     Who entereth herein, a conqueror hath bin;
     Who slayeth the dragon, the shield he shall win;

      And Ethelred uplifted his mace, and struck upon the head of the
      dragon, which fell before him, and gave up his pesty breath, with
      a shriek so horrid and harsh, and withal so piercing, that
      Ethelred had fain to close his ears with his hands against the
      dreadful noise of it, the like whereof was never before heard.”

      Here again I paused abruptly, and now with a feeling of wild
      amazement—for there could be no doubt whatever that, in this
      instance, I did actually hear (although from what direction it
      proceeded I found it impossible to say) a low and apparently
      distant, but harsh, protracted, and most unusual screaming or
      grating sound—the exact counterpart of what my fancy had already
      conjured up for the dragon’s unnatural shriek as described by the
      romancer. Oppressed, as I certainly was, upon the occurrence of this second
      and most extraordinary coincidence, by a thousand conflicting
      sensations, in which wonder and extreme terror were predominant,
      I still retained sufficient presence of mind to avoid exciting,
      by any observation, the sensitive nervousness of my companion. I
      was by no means certain that he had noticed the sounds in
      question; although, assuredly, a strange alteration had, during
      the last few minutes, taken place in his demeanor. From a
      position fronting my own, he had gradually brought round his
      chair, so as to sit with his face to the door of the chamber; and
      thus I could but partially perceive his features, although I saw
      that his lips trembled as if he were murmuring inaudibly. His
      head had dropped upon his breast—yet I knew that he was not
      asleep, from the wide and rigid opening of the eye as I caught a
      glance of it in profile. The motion of his body, too, was at
      variance with this idea—for he rocked from side to side with a
      gentle yet constant and uniform sway. Having rapidly taken notice
      of all this, I resumed the narrative of Sir Launcelot, which thus
      proceeded:

      “And now, the champion, having escaped from the terrible fury of
      the dragon, bethinking himself of the brazen shield, and of the
      breaking up of the enchantment which was upon it, removed the
      carcass from out of the way before him, and approached valorously
      over the silver pavement of the castle to where the shield was
      upon the wall; which in sooth tarried not for his full coming,
      but fell down at his feet upon the silver floor, with a mighty
      great and terrible ringing sound.”

      No sooner had these syllables passed my lips, than—as if a shield
      of brass had indeed, at the moment, fallen heavily upon a floor
      of silver—I became aware of a distinct, hollow, metallic, and
      clangorous, yet apparently muffled reverberation. Completely
      unnerved, I leaped to my feet; but the measured rocking movement
      of Usher was undisturbed. I rushed to the chair in which he sat. His eyes were bent fixedly before him, and throughout his whole
      countenance there reigned a stony rigidity. But, as I placed my
      hand upon his shoulder, there came a strong shudder over his
      whole person; a sickly smile quivered about his lips; and I saw
      that he spoke in a low, hurried, and gibbering murmur, as if
      unconscious of my presence. Bending closely over him, I at length
      drank in the hideous import of his words. “Not hear it?—yes, I hear it, and _have_ heard it. Long—long—long—many minutes, many hours, many days, have I heard
      it—yet I dared not—oh, pity me, miserable wretch that I am!—I
      dared not—I _dared_ not speak! _We have put her living in the
      tomb!_ Said I not that my senses were acute? I _now_ tell you
      that I heard her first feeble movements in the hollow coffin. I
      heard them—many, many days ago—yet I dared not—_I dared not
      speak!_ And now—to-night—Ethelred—ha! ha!—the breaking of the
      hermit’s door, and the death-cry of the dragon, and the clangor
      of the shield!—say, rather, the rending of her coffin, and the
      grating of the iron hinges of her prison, and her struggles
      within the coppered archway of the vault! Oh whither shall I fly? Will she not be here anon? Is she not hurrying to upbraid me for
      my haste? Have I not heard her footstep on the stair? Do I not
      distinguish that heavy and horrible beating of her heart? Madman!”—here he sprang furiously to his feet, and shrieked out
      his syllables, as if in the effort he were giving up his
      soul—“_Madman! I tell you that she now stands without the door!_”

      As if in the superhuman energy of his utterance there had been
      found the potency of a spell—the huge antique pannels to which
      the speaker pointed, threw slowly back, upon the instant, their
      ponderous and ebony jaws. It was the work of the rushing gust—but
      then without those doors there _did_ stand the lofty and
      enshrouded figure of the lady Madeline of Usher. There was blood
      upon her white robes, and the evidence of some 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.