The Tell-Tale Heart

by Edgar Allan Poe Illustration of "The Tell-Tale Heart" by Harry Clarke, from Edgar Allan Poe's Tales of Mystery and Imagination, 1919. TRUE!-NERVOUS--very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am! but why will you say that I am mad? The disease had sharpened my senses--not destroyed--not dulled them. It is impossible to tell how first the idea entered my brain; but once conceived, it haunted me day and night. Now this is the point. I was never kinder to the old man than during the whole week before I killed him. Upon the eighth night I was more than usually cautious in opening the door. I had my head in, and was about to open the lantern, when my thumb slipped upon the tin fastening, and the old man sprang up in bed, crying out: "Who's there?" I kept quite still and said nothing. Presently I heard a slight groan, and I knew it was the groan of mortal terror. It was open--wide, wide open--and I grew furious as I gazed upon it. But even yet I refrained and kept still. "Villains!"

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