ds, no monotonous murmurs, no
shutting of windows and doors at strange hours, as if something or
somebody were coming in or going out, or there was something to be hidden
in those dark mahogany presses. Is there an inner apartment that I have
not seen? The way in which the house is built might admit of it. As I
thought it over, I at once imagined a Bluebeard's chamber. Suppose, for
instance, that the narrow bookshelves to the right are really only a
masked door, such as we remember leading to the private study of one of
our most distinguished townsmen, who loved to steal away from his stately
library to that little silent cell. If this were lighted from above, a
person or persons might pass their days there without attracting
attention from the household, and wander where they pleased at night,--to
Copp's-Hill burial-ground, if they liked,--I said to myself, laughing,
and pulling the bed-clothes over my head. There is no logic in
superstitious-fancies any more than in dreams. A she-ghost wouldn't want
an inner chamber to herself. A live woman, with a valuable soprano
voice, wouldn't start off at night to sprain her ankles over the old
graves of the North-End cemetery.

It is all very easy for you, middle-aged reader, sitting over this page
in the broad daylight, to call me by all manner of asinine and anserine
unchristian names, because I had these fancies running through my head.
I don't care much for your abuse. The question is not, what it is
reasonable for a man to think about, but what he actually does think
about, in the dark, and when he is alone, and his whole body seems but
one great nerve of hearing, and he sees the phosphorescent flashes of his
own eyeballs as they turn suddenly in the direction of the last strange
noise,--what he actually does think about, as he lies and recalls all the
wild stories his head is full of, his fancy hinting the most alarming
conjectures to account for the simplest facts about him, his common-sense
laughing them to scorn the next minute, but his mind still returning to
them, under one shape or another, until he gets very nervous and foolish,
and remembers how pleasant it used to be to have his mother come and tuck
him up and go and sit within call, so that she could hear him at any
minute, if he got very much scared and wanted her. Old babies that we
are!

Daylight will clear up all that lamp-light has left doubtful. I longed
for the morning to come, for I was more cur