the longest day in the year in our hemisphere. I felt dreadfully.
But there was no help for it, so up stairs I went to my little room
in the third floor, undressed myself as slowly as possible so as to
kill time, and with a bitter sigh got between the sheets.

I lay there dismally calculating that sixteen entire hours
must elapse before I could hope for a resurrection.
Sixteen hours in bed! the small of my back ached to think of it.
And it was so light too; the sun shining in at the window,
and a great rattling of coaches in the streets, and the sound
of gay voices all over the house. I felt worse and worse--
at last I got up, dressed, and softly going down in my
stockinged feet, sought out my stepmother, and suddenly threw
myself at her feet, beseeching her as a particular favor to give
me a good slippering for my misbehaviour: anything indeed but
condemning me to lie abed such an unendurable length of time.
But she was the best and most conscientious of stepmothers,
and back I had to go to my room. For several hours I lay
there broad awake, feeling a great deal worse than I have ever
done since, even from the greatest subsequent misfortunes.
At last I must have fallen into a troubled nightmare of a doze;
and slowly waking from it--half steeped in dreams--I opened my eyes,
and the before sunlit room was now wrapped in outer darkness.
Instantly I felt a shock running through all my frame;
nothing was to be seen, and nothing was to be heard;
but a supernatural hand seemed placed in mine. My arm hung
over the counterpane, and the nameless, unimaginable, silent form
or phantom, to which the hand belonged, seemed closely
seated by my bed-side. For what seemed ages piled on ages,
I lay there, frozen with the most awful fears, not daring