But if, in the frame of the door to the left, you pressed what looked
like the head of a large nail, not its door only but the whole cupboard
turned inward on unseen hinges, and revealed an ascending stair, which
was the approach to my uncle's room. At the head of the stair you went
through the wall of the house to the passage under the roof of the
out-house, at the end of which a few more steps led up to the door of the
study. By that door you entered the roof of the more ancient building.
Lighted almost entirely from above, there was no indication outside of
the existence of this floor, except one tiny window, with vaguely pointed
arch, almost in the very top of the gable. Here lay my nest; this was the
bower of my bliss.

Its walls rose but about three feet from the floor ere the slope of the
roof began, so that there was a considerable portion of the room in which
my tall uncle could not stand upright. There was width enough
notwithstanding, in which four as tall as he might have walked abreast up
and down a length of at least five and thirty feet.

Not merely the low walls, but the slopes of the roof were filled with
books as high as the narrow level portion of the ceiling. On the slopes
the bookshelves had of course to be peculiar. My uncle had contrived, and
partly himself made them, with the assistance of a carpenter he had known
all his life. They were individually fixed to the rafters, each
projecting over that beneath it. To get at the highest, he had to stand
on a few steps; to reach the lowest, he had to stoop at a right angle.
The place was almost a tunnel of books.

By setting a chair on an ancient chest that stood against the gable, and
a footstool on the chair, I could mount high enough to get into the deep