lish, and was even aware of
a certain undertone of contemptuous humour in it; but suddenly it was
checked, and I seemed again to hear the croak of the raven.

"If I know nothing of my own garret," I thought, "what is there
to secure me against my own brain? Can I tell what it is even now
generating?--what thought it may present me the next moment, the next
month, or a year away? What is at the heart of my brain? What is behind
my THINK? Am I there at all?--Who, what am I?"

I could no more answer the question now than when the raven put it to
me in--at--"Where in?--where at?" I said, and gave myself up as knowing
anything of myself or the universe.

I started to my feet, hurried across the room to the masked door, where
the mutilated volume, sticking out from the flat of soulless, bodiless,
non-existent books, appeared to beckon me, went down on my knees, and
opened it as far as its position would permit, but could see nothing. I
got up again, lighted a taper, and peeping as into a pair of reluctant
jaws, perceived that the manuscript was verse. Further I could not carry
discovery. Beginnings of lines were visible on the left-hand page,
and ends of lines on the other; but I could not, of course, get at the
beginning and end of a single line, and was unable, in what I could
read, to make any guess at the sense. The mere words, however, woke in
me feelings which to describe was, from their strangeness, impossible.
Some dreams, some poems, some musical phrases, some pictures, wake
feelings such as one never had before, new in colour and form--spiritual
sensations, as it were, hitherto unproved: here, some of the phrases,
some of the senseless half-lines, some even of the individual words
affected me in similar fashion--as with the aroma of an idea, rousing
in me a great longing to know what the poem or poems might, even yet in
their mutilation, hold or suggest.

I copied out a few of the larger shreds attainable, and tried hard to
complete some of the lines, but without the least success. The only
thing I gained in the effort was so much weariness that, when I went to
bed, I fell asleep at once and slept soundly.

In the morning all that horror of the empty garret spaces had left me.

CHAPTER IV. SOMEWHERE OR NOWHERE?

The sun was very bright, but I doubted if the day would long be fine,
and looked into the milky sapphire I wore, to see whether the star in it
was clear. It was even less defined than I had expe