The Arm Chair Library No. 79: The Haunted Homestead — page 12: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

because, should I, like Sterne’s star- sling. want to “get out,” I could do so pe by the back door. : , Now, [ never could account for it, bad but no sooner was I left alone in that | room, resplendent as it was with new- ea ness, than a strange feeling of super- stition came over me that I could neither understand nor escape. It was in vain that [ turned my eyes from the shining, white wall and freshly painted and varnished doors and win- dows, to the cheerful pattern of the carpet and furniture drapery, and said that in this new and freshly furnished chamber the supernatural was out of place, there grew upon me the impres- sion of an unearthly presence near, and the feeling, in spite of all proba- bility, that this—this was the scene of the household mystery—this was the Haunted Chamber! ae In this new aspect I examined it. “yy It was the least like one that could be a imagined. It was a lofty, spacious, : cheerful, double-bedded room, with four large windows—two on the east and two on the west side—with a fire- place in the south wall, and the heads of the beds, at some distance apart, against the north wall. Between the two east windows was a pretty dréss- ing-table and glass; between the west windows was a washstand, with a china service; on each side of the fire- place were two spacious clothes elos- ets; before the fire sat two easy chairs; in intermediate spaces around the walls were half a dozen other chairs. { examined the clothes closets, and found them entirely empty,and at the service of my dresses; then I looked under the bed; then beneath the dra- pery of the dressing-table; and finding nothing that should not be there, un- dressed myself, said my prayers, blew out my candle and went to bed. I could not sleep; my mind, my nerves. had for some reason become - 1 rt THE HAUNTED HOMESTEAD. tienen lst eas 2 unusually excited, and, despite of ex- treme fatigue, I lay awake. I thought the room was too light, for, though. the candle was extinguished, a glo~v- ing fire burned upon the hearth, a few yards from the foot of my bed, and the light of the now risen moon streamed into the east windows. After turning from side to side, vainly woo- ing slumber, I arose and went to close the east front windows. As I reached them with this purpose, I stayed my hand a moment, while I looked out at the snow-clad, moon-lit mountain landscape; below me was the bottom, bounded, not many furlongs off, by the cedar-grown precipice, down which, that very evening, I had come; under the shelter of that mountain, straight in the line of my vision, lay the family graveyard of the former owner, in a copse of evergreens, where the spectral-looking tombstones gleamed whitely among the dark firs and cedars. Meditating upon those departed, I closed the blinds of the front windows, and then went to the back ones. The latter looked straight down into the uncurtained windows of the lighted dining-room, where the young people were still at play. Above these windows, and directly opposite to mine, were those of Mrs. Legare’s bed- room, now dimly lighted from the fire within. - With this proximity of the family. I felt less lonely, closed my blinds and returned to bed. Still I could not sleep. The fire on the hearth, beyond my bed’s foot. - flickered up and down. casting tail, spectral shadows, that danced upon the walls, or stretched their long arms over the ceiling. For hours [ lay watching this phantasmagoria, unti! the fire died down, and the tall, dane- ing shadows sank into a mass of dark. ness, before s.cep came to my wearied - €omicbooks oe ig ee pie Pe e 4) sls F + i= “ Z