"The warmth within doors was still more oppressive than outside. I opened both the windows, drew up my bed between them, and placed the table with the lamp on it near the bed's head. I had previously thrown off my coat and waistcoat, and laid them across one end of the table. The diamonds were still in the pocket of the coat; I intended taking them out before going to sleep, and putting them under my pillow, or in some equally secure place. My revolver I also placed beside the lamp. Then, having provided myself with a book out of my trunk, and drawn the bolt of the door, I reclined on the outside of the bed and began to read. "I could not, however, fix my mind upon the page. First my attention and then my eyes would wander: I took a futile and absurd interest in scrutinising all the details of the room. I recollect them distinctly now. The walls were not papered, but the plaster was washed over with a dark gray tint, which rubbed off on the fingers, and the uniformity of which was relieved by vertical bands of dull red painted at intervals of about five feet from floor to ceiling. The ceiling was low--about eight feet from the floor--and whitewashed. In one corner stood the china stove, a glistening, pallid structure of plain tiles, built up four-square nearly to the top of the room. On the side of the room opposite the two windows and the bed was fastened a tall looking-glass, formed of three plates set one above the other, edge to edge, in such a manner as painfully to cut up and distort whatever was reflected in them. In front of the looking-glass was a lilliputian washstand, and beside it a straight-legged chair without rungs. In a word, a room more utterly devoid of every kind of picturesque or ornamental attraction could not be imagined; yet I could not keep my eyes from vacantly traversing and retraversing its vacancy. The door was behind me, as I lay turned towards the little table on which the lamp stood, but I could see the free edge of it brokenly reflected in the mirror, with the cracked black porcelain latch-handle and the iron bolt which I had shot into its place. "I was anything but sleepy: the heat, and the pest of midges and beetles which the light attracted in through the windows, would have sufficed to keep me awake even had my mind been at ease. In order to disperse the insects I finally extinguished the lamp; the moonlight in the room was so bright that I could almost have seen to read by it. I closed the book, however, and clasping my hands under my head, I gave myself up to meditation. Not a sound of any kind was audible except the muffled ticking of the watch in my waistcoat pocket, and the faint rustle of the pillow as I breathed. The white moonlight seemed to augment the stillness; the whole great night, and the house with it, seemed silently and intently listening; and at length I found myself listening intently too! For what? I could not tell; but I listened nevertheless.