By this time I was sensible that there was a little confusion in my thoughts, and by way of employing them on practical and useful objects, I determined to make a tour of the room. But first it was necessary to get rid, somehow or other, of my plunder--to plant the property, as we call it; and with that view I laid it carefully, piece by piece, in the corner of a sofa, and concealed it with the cover. This was a great relief. I almost began to feel like the injured party--more like a captive than a robber; and I groped my way through the room, with a sort of vague idea that I might perhaps stumble upon some trap-door, or sliding-panel, which would lead into the open air, or, at worst, into a secret chamber, where I should be safe for any given number of years from my persecutors. But there was nothing of the kind in this stern, prosaic place: nothing but a few cabinets and tables, and couches, and arm-chairs, and common-chairs, and devotional-chairs; and footstools, and lamps, and statuettes, and glass-shades, and knick-knacks; and one elaborate girandole hung round with crystal prisms, which played such an interminable tune against each other when I chanced to move them, that I stumbled away as fast as I could, and subsided into a _fauteuil_ so rich, so deep, that I felt myself swallowed up, as it were, in its billows of swan's down. How long I had been in the house by this time, I cannot tell. It seemed to me, when I looked back, to form a considerable portion of a lifetime. Indeed, I did not very well remember the more distant events of the night; although every now and then the fact occurred to me with startling distinctness, that all I had gone through was only preliminary to something still to happen; that the morning was to come, the family to be astir, and the housebreaker to be apprehended. My reflections were not continuous. It may be that I dozed between whiles. How else can I account for my feeling myself grasped by the throat, to the very brink of suffocation, by a hand without a body? How else can I account for sister Laura standing over me where I reclined, pointing to the stolen plate on the sofa, and lecturing me on my horrible propensities till she grew black in the face, and her voice rose to a wild unearthly scream which pierced through my brain? When this fancy occurred, I started from my recumbent posture. A voice was actually in my ears, and a living form before my eyes: a lady stood contemplating me, with a half-scream on her lips, and the colour fading from her cheek; and as I moved, she would have fallen to the ground, had I not sprung up and caught her in my arms. I laid her softly down in the _fauteuil_. It was the morning twilight. The silence was profound. The boundaries of the room were still dim and indistinct. Is it any wonder that I was in some considerable degree of perplexity as to whether I was not still in the land of dreams?