Nightmare-Touch 239 



lock ; the protecting light and the footsteps of 

 my guardian receded together. Then an agony 

 of fear would come upon me. Something in the 

 black air would seem to gather and grow (I 

 thought that 1 could even bear it grow) till I had 

 to scream. Screaming regularly brought punish- 

 ment ; but it also brought back the light, which 

 more than consoled for the punishment. This fact 

 being at last found out, orders were given to pay 

 no further heed to the screams of the Child. 



Why was I thus insanely afraid ? Partly be- 

 cause the dark had always been peopled for me 

 with shapes of terror. So far back as memory 

 extended, I had suffered from ugly dreams ; and 

 when aroused from them I could always see the 

 forms dreamed of, lurking in the shadows of the 

 room. They would soon fade out ; but for sev- 

 eral moments they would appear like tangible 

 realities. And they were always the same fig- 

 ures. . . . Sometimes, without any preface of 

 dreams, I used to see them at twilight-time, 

 following me about from room to room, or 

 reaching long dim hands after me, from story 

 to story, up through the interspaces of the deep 

 stairways. 



