His hand trembled a little, and the snuffers were heavy and awkward to use.

When he closed them on the wick, he closed them a hair-breadth too low.

In an instant the candle was out, and the room was plunged in pitch darkness.
The one impression which the absence of light immediately produced on his mind was distrust of the curtained bed--distrust which shaped itself into no distinct idea, but which was powerful enough, in its very vagueness, to bind him down to his chair, to make his heart beat fast, and to set him listening intently.

No sound stirred in the room, but the familiar sound of the rain against the window, louder and sharper now than he had heard it yet.
Still the vague distrust, the inexpressible dread possessed him, and kept him in his chair.

He had put his carpet-bag on the table when he first entered the room, and he now took the key from his pocket, reached out his hand softly, opened the bag, and groped in it for his traveling writing-case, in which he knew that there was a small store of matches.
When he had got one of the matches he waited before he struck it on the coarse wooden table, and listened intently again without knowing why.
Still there was no sound in the room but the steady, ceaseless rattling sound of the rain.
He lighted the candle again without another moment of delay, and, on the instant of its burning up, the first object in the room that his eyes sought for was the curtained bed.
Just before the light had been put out he had looked in that direction, and had seen no change, no disarrangement of any sort in the folds of the closely-drawn curtains.
When he looked at the bed now, he saw hanging over the side of it a long white hand.
It lay perfectly motionless midway on the side of the bed, where the curtain at the head and the curtain at the foot met.