THE HOUR OF VENGEANCE
sudden turn in the path which he was following, however, revealed one of the councilor's windows aglow with light, and as he pressed quietly around the end of the building the sound of a low voice came to him through the open door. Cautiously he approached and peered in. A large oil lamp, the light of which he had seen in the window, was burning on a table in the big room but the voice came from the little closet into which Obadiah had taken him the preceding night. For several minutes he crouched and listened. He heard the chuckling laugh of the old councilor—and then an incoherent raving that set his blood tingling. There is a horror in the sound of madness, a horror that creeps to the very pit of one's soul, that sends shivering dread from every nerve center, that causes one who is alone with it to sweat with a nameless fear. It was the voice of madness that came from that little room. Before it Nathaniel quailed as if a clammy hand had reached out from the darkness and gripped him by the
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