vibrant like the smitten chords of a musical instrument. What it
was grew no plainer as I went nearer, and when I came close up, I
ceased to see it, only the form and colour of the trees beyond
seemed strangely uncertain. I would have passed between the stems,
but received a slight shock, stumbled, and fell. When I rose, I
saw before me the wooden wall of the garret chamber. I turned, and
there was the mirror, on whose top the black eagle seemed but that
moment to have perched.

Terror seized me, and I fled. Outside the chamber the wide garret
spaces had an UNCANNY look. They seemed to have long been waiting
for something; it had come, and they were waiting again! A shudder
went through me on the winding stair: the house had grown strange
to me! something was about to leap upon me from behind! I darted
down the spiral, struck against the wall and fell, rose and ran. On
the next floor I lost my way, and had gone through several passages
a second time ere I found the head of the stair. At the top of the
great stair I had come to myself a little, and in a few moments I
sat recovering my breath in the library.

Nothing should ever again make me go up that last terrible stair!
The garret at the top of it pervaded the whole house! It sat upon
it, threatening to crush me out of it! The brooding brain of the
building, it was full of mysterious dwellers, one or other of whom
might any moment appear in the library where I sat! I was nowhere
safe! I would let, I would sell the dreadful place, in which an
aërial portal stood ever open to creatures whose life was other than
human! I would purchase a crag in Switzerland, and thereon build a
wooden nest of one story with never a garret above it, guarded by
some grand old peak that would send down nothing worse than a few