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Updated: June 19, 2025
He seemed to hold his breath; and his step was so soft and stealthy, that once or twice I stopped, under the impression that I had left him behind, but found him ever beside me. There were three of us in close proximity, and the stairway was lined with officers and attendants; but such was the death-like stillness that I could distinctly hear my own foot-fall.
But suddenly there was heard the horrible foot-fall of Gargantua, who was ascending the stairs of his house to visit the granaries, and made the planks, the beams, and everything else tremble. Certain old rats asked each other what might mean this seignorial footstep, with which they were unacquainted, and some of them decamped, and they did well, for the lord and master entered suddenly.
At each foot-fall on the loose boards of the floor, clouds of stifling dust arose, and strange sounds were heard in and behind the piles of rubbish, as if all sorts of small animals might be skurrying about, and giving alarms to each other. Mercy stood still on the threshold, her face full of astonishment. The dust made her cough; and at first she could hardly see which way to step.
"I listened while the bell once more Rang through the void, deserted hall; I heard no voice, nor light foot-fall, And turned me sadly from the door. "Though fair was Autumn's dreamy day, And fair the wood-paths carpeted With fallen leaves of gold and red, I missed a dearer sight than they.
"'Ah, sighed Miss Ringtop, 'it reminds me of Gamaliel J. Gawthrop's beautiful lines: "'Unrobed man is lying hoary In the distance, gray and dead; There no wreaths of godless glory To his mist-like tresses wed, And the foot-fall of the Ages Reigns supreme, with noiseless tread.
"All poor women and men, Broken-hearted and weeping, Their dead they call on in vain, Quietly smiling and sleeping. "Friends, now listen and hear, Give over crying and grieving, There shall come a day and a year When the dead shall be as the living. "There shall come a call, a foot-fall, And the golden trumpeters blowing Shall stir the dead with their call, Bid them be rising and going.
The steps grew more distinct. Soon, without possessing the power of this ardent creature to abolish space and meet her other self, even a stranger would have heard the foot-fall of a man upon the staircase which led down from the gallery to the parlor. The sound of that step would have startled the most heedless being into thought; it was impossible to hear it coolly.
There was nothing in that to be afraid of, and Colonel Witham seated himself in a chair by the desk, with the lantern beside him on the floor. Now that he was here, he scarce knew why he had come. What was that? Was that a foot-fall on some floor above? Colonel Witham sat bolt upright in his seat and listened. He took out his handkerchief and mopped his brow. Then he was angry with himself again.
Antonio hurried through: and there, inside the hot, smoke-blackened walls, half-seated, half-lying on the banqueta, was his master, his head hanging forward upon his breast, and both hands nervously twisted in the long curls of his hair. Antonio's foot-fall caused him to look up only for a moment. "O God! My mother my sister!"
And when it went as it was doing to-day, he could quite forget that there were such things as children, and give himself up to this endless procession, in which column after column filed past him, in the foot-fall of the rhythm.
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