The room was on the ground floor, looking out upon the orchard, with a northern aspect, so that the sun could only shine in for a small portion of the year, during the summer months. The apple-trees were now in blossom, the white pink and flowers bright in the sunshine contrasting with the grey lichen which wrapped every branch and hung down like ribbons. The room was the oldest part of the house, the only remaining portion of an earlier house: it was low and small: the fireplace had never been modernised: it stood wide open, with its dogs and its broad chimney: the window was of three narrow lights, one of which could be opened: all were still provided with the old diamond panes in their leaden setting. Armorel observed the muslin blind put up by Dorcas to keep out prying eyes. In dull and cloudy days the room would be gloomy. As it was, even with the bright sunshine out of doors, the air seemed cold and oppressive--perhaps from the fresh association of Death. Armorel shivered as she looked about her. The greater part of the room was taken up by a large bed. In the old lady's time it had curtains and a head, and things at the four corners like the plumes of a hearse, but in faded crimson. Then it looked splendid. Now, the bed had been stripped: curtains and plumes and all were gone, and only the skeleton bed left, with its four great solid posts and its upper beams, and its feather bed lying exposed, with the bare pillow-cases upon the mattress. But the bedstead was magnificent without its trappings, because it was made of mahogany black with age: they no longer make such bedsteads. There was also a table--an old black table--with massive legs; but there was nothing on it. Between door and wall there was a row of pegs, with a chair beneath them. Now, by some freak of chance, when Dorcas and Chessun hung up the ancient dame's things for the last time--her great bonnet, and the cap of many ribbons within it, and her silk dress--they arranged them so as to present a most extraordinary presentment of the venerable lady herself--much elongated and without any face: she seemed to be sitting in the chair below the pegs, dressed as usual, and nodding her great bonnet, but pulled out to eight or ten feet in length. Armorel caught the ghostly similitude and started, trembling. It seemed as if in a moment the wrinkled old face, with the hawk-like nose and the keen eyes, would come back to the bonnet and the cap. She was so much startled that she turned the bonnet round. And then the figure seemed watching with the shoulders. This was uncanny, but it was not so terrible as the faceless form.