behind a painted hanging-cloth Of coiled gold serpents ready to make spring, Ignoble Death stood, his convulsive hand Grasping a rapier part-way down the blade To deal the blow with deadly-jewelled hilt—      Black Death, turned white with horror of himself. Straight on came he that sang the blithe sea-song; And now his step was on the stair, and now He neared the blazoned hanging-cloth, and now... The lights were out, and all life lay in trance On floor or pallet, blanketed to chin, Each in his mask of sullen-seeming death—      Fond souls that recked not what was in the air, Else had the dead man's scabbard as it clashed Against the balustrade, then on the tiles, Brought awkward witness. One base hind there was Had stolen a venison-pasty on the shelf, And now did penance; him the fall half roused From dreadful nightmare; once he turned and gasped, Then straightway snored again. No other sound Within the dream-enchanted house was heard, Save that the mastiff, lying at the gate With visionary bone, snarled in his sleep. Secret as bridal-kiss may murder be, Done was the deed that could not be undone Throughout eternity. O silent tongue That would blab all with silence! What to do? How hide this speechless witness from men's gaze? Living, that body vexed us; being dead      'T is like to give us trouble and to spare. O for a cavern in deep-bowelled earth! Quick, ere the dusky petals of the night Unclosing bare the fiery heart of dawn And thus undo us with its garish light, Let us this mute and pale accusing clay In some undreamed-of sepulchre bestow, But where? Hold back thy fleet-wing'd coursers, Time, Whilst we bethink us! Ah—such place there is! Close, too, at hand—a place wherein a man Might lie till doomsday safer from the touch Of prying clown than is the spiced dust Of an Egyptian in his pyramid. At a dark alcove's end of that long hall, The ancient armor-room in the east wing, A certain door (whereof no mortal knew save Wyndham, now that other lay a-cold)      Was to the panels of the wall so set, And with such devilish shrewdness overlaid By carvings of wild-flower and curled grape-leaf, That one not in the favor of the trick, Albeit he knew such mechanism was, Ere he put finger on the secret spring Had need of Job for ancestor, in faith! You pressed a rose, a least suspected rose, And two doors turned on hinge, the inner door Closing a space of say some six feet square, Unlighted, sheathed with iron. Doubtless here The mediaeval Wyndhams hid their plate When things 

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