hat, grasped the silver-headed cane in his right hand, and moving his
small shaving-glass slowly up and down before him, so as by piecemeal to
take in his whole figure, felt convinced that he would well pass for
Squire Woodcock's genuine phantom. But after the first feeling of
self-satisfaction with his anticipated success had left him, it was not
without some superstitious embarrassment that Israel felt himself
encased in a dead man's broadcloth; nay, in the very coat in which the
deceased had no doubt fallen down in his fit. By degrees he began to
feel almost as unreal and shadowy as the shade whose part he intended to
enact.

Waiting long and anxiously till darkness came, and then till he thought
it was fairly midnight, he stole back into the closet, and standing for
a moment uneasily in the middle of the floor, thinking over all the
risks he might run, he lingered till he felt himself resolute and calm.
Then groping for the door leading into the hall, put his hand on the
knob and turned it. But the door refused to budge. Was it locked? The
key was not in. Turning the knob once more, and holding it so, he
pressed firmly against the door. It did not move. More firmly still,
when suddenly it burst open with a loud crackling report. Being cramped,
it had stuck in the sill. Less than three seconds passed when, as Israel
was groping his way down the long wide hall towards the large staircase
at its opposite end, he heard confused hurrying noises from the
neighboring rooms, and in another instant several persons, mostly in
night-dresses, appeared at their chamber-doors, thrusting out alarmed
faces, lit by a lamp held by one of the number, a rather elderly lady in
widow's weeds, who by her appearance seemed to have just risen from a
sleepless chair, instead of an oblivious couch. Israel's heart beat like
a hammer; his face turned like a sheet. But bracing himself, pulling his
hat lower down over his eyes, settling his head in the collar of his