thian columns.

It was ajar like the rest, and, call me coward or call me fool--I
have called Hibbard both, you will remember--I found that it cost me
an effort to lay my hand on its mahogany panels. Danger, if danger
there was, lurked here; and while I had never known myself to quail
before any ordinary antagonist, I, like others of my kind, have no
especial fondness for unseen and mysterious perils.

Hibbard, who up to this point had followed me almost too closely,
now accorded me all the room that was necessary. It was with a sense
of entering alone upon the scene that I finally thrust wide the door
and crossed the threshold of this redoubtable room where, but two
short weeks before, a fresh victim had been added to the list of
those who had by some unheard-of, unimaginable means found their
death within its recesses.

My first glance showed me little save the ponderous outlines of an
old settle, which jutted from the corner of the fireplace half way
out into the room. As it was seemingly from this seat that the men,
who at various times had been found lying here, had fallen to their
doom, a thrill passed over me as I noted its unwieldy bulk and the
deep shadow it threw on the ancient and dishonored hearthstone. To
escape the ghastly memories it evoked and also to satisfy myself
that the room was really as empty as it seemed, I took another step
forward. This caused the light from the lantern I carried to spread
beyond the point on which it had hitherto been so effectively
concentrated; but the result was to emphasize rather than detract
from the extreme desolation of the great room. The settle was a
fixture, as I afterwards found, and was almost the only article of
furniture to be seen on the wide expanse of uncarpeted floor. There
was a table or two in hiding somewhere amid the shadows at the other
end from where I stood, and possibly some kind of stool or settee;
but the general impression made upon me was that of a completely
dismantled place given over to moth and rust.

I do not include the walls. They were not bare like the floor, but
covered with books from floor to ceiling. These books were not the
books of to-day; they had stood so long in their places unnoted and
untouched, that they had acquired the color of fungus, and smelt--
Well, there is no use adding to the picture. Every one knows the
spirit of sickening desolation pervading rooms which have been shut
up for an indefinite length of t