I turned on my back, and looked up. Was I mad? drunk? dreaming? giddy again? or, was the top of the bed really moving down--sinking slowly, regularly, silently, horribly, right down throughout the whole of its length and breadth--right down upon me, as I lay underneath? My blood seemed to stand still; a deadly paralyzing coldness stole all over me, as I turned my head round on the pillow, and determined to test whether the bed-top was really moving or not, by keeping my eye on the man in the picture. The next look in that direction was enough. The dull, black, frowsy outline of the valance above me was within an inch of being parallel with his waist. I still looked breathlessly. And steadily, and slowly--very slowly--I saw the figure, and the line of frame below the figure, vanish, as the valance moved down before it. I am, constitutionally, any thing but timid. I have been, on more than one occasion, in peril of my life, and have not lost my self-possession for an instant; but, when the conviction first settled on my mind that the bed-top was really moving, was steadily and continuously sinking down upon me, I looked up for one awful minute, or more, shuddering, helpless, panic-stricken, beneath the hideous machinery for murder, which was advancing closer and closer to suffocate me where I lay. Then the instinct of self-preservation came, and nerved me to save my life, while there was yet time. I got out of bed very quietly, and quickly dressed myself again in my upper clothing. The candle, fully spent, went out. I sat down in the arm-chair that stood near, and watched the bed-top slowly descending. I was literally spell-bound by it. If I had heard footsteps behind me, I could not have turned round; if a means of escape had been miraculously provided for me, I could not have moved to take advantage of it. The whole life in me, was, at that moment, concentrated in my eyes.