The works of Edgar Allan Poe; newly collected and edited, with a memoir, critical introductions, and notes, by Edmund Clarence Stedman and George Edward Woodberry; the illustrations by Albert Edward Sterner.

TALES OF CONSCIENCE
Ad man than during the whole week before I killed
him. And every night, about midnight, I turned the
latch of his door and opened it - oh, so gently! And
then, when I had made an opening sufficient for my
head, I put in a dark lantern, all closed, closed, so
that no light shone out, and then I thrust in my head.
Oh, you would have laughed to see how cunningly I
thrust it in! I moved it slowly- very, very slowly,
so that I might not disturb the old man's sleep. It
took me an hour to place my whole head within the
opening so far that I could see him as he lay upon his
bed. Ha! - would a madman have been so wise as
this? And then, when my head was well in the room,
I undid the lantern cautiously - oh, so cautiously -
cautiously (for the hinges creaked) - I undid it just so
much that a single thin ray fell upon the vulture eye.
And this I did for seven long nights -every night
just at midnight -but I found the eye always closed;
and so it was impossible to do the work; for it was
not the old man who vexed me, but his Evil Eye.
And every morning, when the day broke, I went
boldly into the chamber, and spoke courageously to
him, calling him by name in a hearty tone, and inquiring how he had passed the night. So you see he
would have been a very profound old man, indeed, to
suspect that every night, just at twelve, I looked in
upon him while he slept.
Upon the eighth night I was more than usually
cautious in opening the door. A watch's minute-hand
moves more quickly than did mine. Never before
that night had I felt the extent of my own powers -
of my sagacity. I could scarcely contain my feelings
of triumph. To think that there I was, opening the
door, little by little, and he not even to dream of my