The goblin was gone.
He was free.
He stood panting, like one just roused from some terrible dream, wiping
the reeking perspiration from his forehead, and thinking confusedly
and wearily what a fool he had been. He felt he had wandered a long
distance from his house, but had no distinct perception of his
whereabouts. He only knew he was in some thinly peopled street, whose
familiar aspect seemed lost to him in the magical disguise the superb
moonlight had thrown over all. Suddenly a film seemed to drop from his
eyes, as they became riveted on a lighted window, on the opposite side
of the way. He started, and a secret terror crept over him, vaguely
mixed with the memory of the shock he had felt as he turned the last
corner, and his distinct, awful feeling that something invisible had
passed him. At the same instant he felt, and thrilled to feel, a touch,
as of a light finger, on his cheek. He was in Hanover Street. Before
him was the house,--the oyster-room staring at him through the lighted
transparencies of its two windows, like two square eyes, below; and
his tenant's light in a chamber above! The added shock which this
discovery gave to the heaving of his heart made him gasp for breath.
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