About six o'clock on the Saturday evening following, the cook, 'an
honest, sober woman, now aged nigh sixty years,' being alone in the
kitchen, saw, on looking up, it is supposed, the same fat but
aristocratic-looking hand, laid with its palm against the glass, near
the side of the window, and this time moving slowly up and down, pressed
all the while against the glass, as if feeling carefully for some
inequality in its surface. She cried out, and said something like a
prayer on seeing it. But it was not withdrawn for several seconds after.
After this, for a great many nights, there came at first a low, and
afterwards an angry rapping, as it seemed with a set of clenched
knuckles at the back-door. And the servant-man would not open it, but
called to know who was there; and there came no answer, only a sound as
if the palm of the hand was placed against it, and drawn slowly from
side to side with a sort of soft, groping motion.
All this time, sitting in the back parlour, which, for the time, they
used as a drawing-room, Mr. and Mrs. Prosser were disturbed by rappings
at the window, sometimes very low and furtive, like a clandestine
signal, and at others sudden, and so loud as to threaten the breaking of
the pane.
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