`` you bear his burden '' on a may morning of that same year , a month to the day since the old grave-robber 's midnight visit that began the singular curiosity of the anthropophagi affair , as the doctor had taken to calling it , i was bounding up the stairs in answer to his incessant summonses , ignored for too long ( i did not appear upon the first shout , in other words ) and now shaking the house at 425 harrington lane to its foundations .