here and there in sight, and long vistas
whose gloom was thinned by a few lurking cobwebbed windows and small
dusky skylights. I gazed with a strange mingling of awe and pleasure:
the wide expanse of garret was my own, and unexplored!

In the middle of it stood an unpainted inclosure of rough planks, the
door of which was ajar. Thinking Mr. Raven might be there, I pushed the
door, and entered.

The small chamber was full of light, but such as dwells in places
deserted: it had a dull, disconsolate look, as if it found itself of no
use, and regretted having come. A few rather dim sunrays, marking their
track through the cloud of motes that had just been stirred up,
fell upon a tall mirror with a dusty face, old-fashioned and rather
narrow--in appearance an ordinary glass. It had an ebony frame, on the
top of which stood a black eagle, with outstretched wings, in his beak a
golden chain, from whose end hung a black ball.

I had been looking at rather than into the mirror, when suddenly I
became aware that it reflected neither the chamber nor my own person. I
have an impression of having seen the wall melt away, but what followed
is enough to account for any uncertainty:--could I have mistaken for a
mirror the glass that protected a wonderful picture?

I saw before me a wild country, broken and heathy. Desolate hills of
no great height, but somehow of strange appearance, occupied the middle
distance; along the horizon stretched the tops of a far-off mountain
range; nearest me lay a tract of moorland, flat and melancholy.

Being short-sighted, I stepped closer to examine the texture of a stone
in the immediate foreground, and in the act espied, hopping toward me
with solemnity, a large and ancient raven, whose purply black was here
and there softened with gray. He seemed looking for worms as he came.
Nowise astonished at the appearance of a live creature in a picture,
I took another step forward to see him better, stumbled over
something--doubtless the frame of the mirror--and stood nose to beak
with the bird: I was in the open air, on a houseless heath!

CHAPTER III. THE RAVEN

I turned and looked behind me: all was vague and uncertain, as when
one cannot distinguish between fog and field, between cloud and
mountain-side. One fact only was plain--that I saw nothing I knew.
Imagining myself involved in a visual illusion, and that touch would
correct sight, I stretched my arms and felt about me, walking in this