Fastened up as I was in the house, I did not feel myself quite in prison, because, should I, like Sterne's starling, want to "get out," I could do so by the back door. Now, I never could account for it, but no sooner was I left alone in that room, resplendent as it was with newness, than a strange feeling of superstition came over me, that I could neither understand nor escape. It was in vain that I turned my eyes from the shining white wall and freshly painted windows to the cheerful pattern of the carpet and furniture drapery, and said that in this new and freshly furnished chamber the supernatural was out of place--there grew upon me the impression of an unearthly presence near; and the feeling, in spite of all probability, that this--this was the scene of the household mystery--this was the haunted chamber! In this new aspect I examined it. It was the least like one that could be imagined. It was a lofty, spacious, cheerful, double-bedded room, with four large windows--two on the east and two on the west side--with a fireplace in the south wall, and the heads of the beds, at some distance apart, against the north wall. Between the two east windows was a pretty dressing-table and glass; between the west windows was a neat washstand with a china service; on each side of the fireplace were two spacious clothes closets; before the fire sat two easy-chairs; in intermediate spaces around the walls were half a dozen other chairs. I examined the clothes closets, and found them entirely empty, and at the service of my dresses; then I looked under the bed; then beneath the drapery of the dressing-table; and finding nothing that should not be there, undressed myself, said my prayers, blew out my candle, and went to bed. I could not sleep; my mind, my nerves, had for some reason become unusually excited; and, despite of extreme fatigue, I lay awake. I thought the room was too light; for, though the candle was extinguished, a glowing fire burned upon the hearth, a few yards from the foot of my bed, and the light of the now risen moon streamed into the east windows. After turning from side to side, vainly wooing slumber, I arose and went to close the east front windows. As I reached them with this purpose, I stayed my hand a moment, while I looked out at the snow-clad, moon-lit mountain landscape; below me was the bottom, bounded, not many furlongs off, by the cedar-grown precipice, down which, that very evening, I had come; under the shelter of that mountain, straight in the line of my vision, lay the family graveyard of the former owner, in a copse of evergreens, where the spectral-looking tombstones gleamed whitely among the dark firs and cedars. Meditating upon those departed, I closed the blinds of the front windows, and then went to the back ones.