For there was yet another tenant of our chamber in the person of
      young Zoilus. Dead, and at full length he lay, enshrouded; the
      genius and the demon of the scene. Alas! he bore no portion in
      our mirth, save that his countenance, distorted with the plague,
      and his eyes, in which Death had but half extinguished the fire
      of the pestilence, seemed to take such interest in our merriment
      as the dead may haply take in the merriment of those who are to
      die. But although I, Oinos, felt that the eyes of the departed
      were upon me, still I forced myself not to perceive the
      bitterness of their expression, and gazing down steadily into the
      depths of the ebony mirror, sang with a loud and sonorous voice
      the songs of the son of Teios. But gradually my songs they
      ceased, and their echoes, rolling afar off among the sable
      draperies of the chamber, became weak, and undistinguishable, and
      so faded away. And lo! from among those sable draperies where the
      sounds of the song departed, there came forth a dark and
      undefined shadow—a shadow such as the moon, when low in heaven,
      might fashion from the figure of a man: but it was the shadow
      neither of man nor of God, nor of any familiar thing. And
      quivering awhile among the draperies of the room, it at length
      rested in full view upon the surface of the door of brass. But
      the shadow was vague, and formless, and indefinite, and was the
      shadow neither of man nor of God—neither God of Greece, nor God
      of Chaldaea, nor any Egyptian God. And the shadow rested upon the
      brazen doorway, and under the arch of the entablature of the
      door, and moved not, nor spoke any word, but there became
      stationary and remained. And the door whereupon the shadow rested
      was, if I remember aright, over against the feet of the young
      Zoilus enshrouded. But we, the seven there assembled, having seen
      the shadow as it came out from among the draperies, dared not
      steadily behold it, but cast down our eyes, and gazed continually
      into the depths of the mirror of ebony. And at length I, Oinos,
      speaking some low words, demanded of the shadow its dwelling and
      its appellation. And the shadow answered, “I am SHADOW, and my
      dwelling is near to the Catacombs of Ptolemais, and hard by those
      dim plains of Helusion which border upon the foul Charonian
      canal.” And then did we, the seven, start from our seats in
      horror, and stand trembling, and shuddering, and aghast, for the
      tones in the voice of the shadow were not the tones of any one
      being, but of a multitude of beings, and, varying in their
      cadences from syllable to syllable fell duskly upon our ears in
      the well-remembered and familiar accents of many thousand