Most of our foolish conceits explain themselves in some such
simple way. And, yet, for all that, I confess, that, when I woke up the
other evening, and heard, first a sweet complaining cry, and then
footsteps, and then the dragging sound,--nothing but his bed, I am quite
sure,--I felt a stirring in the roots of my hair as the feasters did in
Keats's terrible poem of "Lamia."
There is nothing very odd in my feeling nervous when I happen to lie
awake and get listening for sounds. Just keep your ears open any time
after midnight, when you are lying in bed in a lone attic of a dark
night. What horrid, strange, suggestive, unaccountable noises you will
hear! The stillness of night is a vulgar error. All the dead things
seem to be alive. Crack! That is the old chest of drawers; you never
hear it crack in the daytime. Creak! There's a door ajar; you know you
shut them all.
Where can that latch be that rattles so? Is anybody trying it softly?
or, worse than any body, is----? (Cold shiver.) Then a sudden gust that
jars all the windows;--very strange!--there does not seem to be any wind
about that it belongs to.
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