I pulled up the blinds and examined the fastenings of the several
windows. Attracted by the fall of a particle of dust, I leaned forward
and looked up the blackness of the wide chimney. Then, trying to
preserve my scientific attitude of mind, I walked round and began
tapping the oak paneling for any secret opening, but I desisted before
reaching the alcove. I saw my face in a mirror--white.

There were two big mirrors in the room, each with a pair of sconces
bearing candles, and on the mantelshelf, too, were candles in china
candle-sticks. All these I lit one after the other. The fire was
laid--an unexpected consideration from the old housekeeper--and I lit
it, to keep down any disposition to shiver, and when it was burning
well I stood round with my back to it and regarded the room again. I
had pulled up a chintz-covered armchair and a table to form a kind of
barricade before me. On this lay my revolver, ready to hand. My precise
examination had done me a little good, but J still found the remoter
darkness of the place and its perfect stillness too stimulating for the
imagination. The echoing of the stir and crackling of the fire was * no
sort of comfort to me. The shadow in the alcove at the end of the
room began to display that undefinable quality of a presence, that odd
suggestion of a lurking living thing that comes so easily in silence
and solitude. And to reassure myself, I walked with a candle into it
and satisfied myself that there was nothing tangible there. I stood that
candle upon the floor of the alcove and left it in that position.

By this time I was in a state of considerable nervous tension, although
to my reason there was no adequate cause for my condition. My mind,
however, was perfectly clear. I postulated quite unreservedly that
nothing supernatural could happen, and to pass the time I began
stringing some rhymes together, Ingoldsby fashion, concerning the
original legend of the place. A few I spoke aloud, but the echoes were
not pleasant* For the same reason I also abandoned, after a time, a
conversation with myself upon the impossibility of ghosts and haunting.
My mind reverted to the three old and distorted people downstairs, and I
tried to keep it upon that topic.

The sombre reds and grays of the room troubled me; even with its seven
candles the place was merely dim. The light in the alcove flaring in
a draft, and the fire flickering, kept the shadows and penumbra
perpetually shifting and st