I alighted upon a heap
of broken glass in a large bare room. An ominous chill at once struck
to my heart. Though I am anything but a sensitive man as far as
physical impressions are concerned, there was something in the hollow
echo that arose from the four blank walls about me as my feet
alighted on that rough, uncarpeted floor, that struck a vague chill
through my blood, and I actually hesitated for the moment whether to
pursue the investigations I had promised myself, or beat a hasty
retreat. A glance at the huge distorted limbs swaying across the
square of the open window decided me. It was easy to enter by means
of that unsteady support, but it would be extremely unsafe to venture
forth in that way. If I prized life and limb I must seek some other
method of egress. I at once put my apprehensions in my pocket and
entered upon my self imposed task.
A single glance was sufficient to exhaust the resources of the empty
garret in which I found myself. Two or three old chairs piled in one
corner, a rusty stove or so, a heap of tattered and decaying
clothing, were all that met my gaze. Taking my way, then, at once to
the ladder, whose narrow ends projecting above a hole in the garret
floor, seemed to proffer the means of reaching the rooms below, I
proceeded to descend into what to my excited imagination looked like a
gulf of darkness.
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