His attention gradually relaxed, and he fell fast asleep.

When he awoke, he thought there must be something the matter with
his eyes; but, rubbing them a little, he soon found that the
moonlight was really streaming through the east window, that the
lamps were all extinguished, and that he was alone. He listened,
but no distant murmur in the echoing passages, not even the
shutting of a door, broke the deep silence; he groped his way down
the stairs, and found that the door at the bottom was locked on the
other side. He began now to comprehend that he must have slept a
long time, that he had been overlooked, and was shut up there for
the night.

His first sensation, perhaps, was not altogether a comfortable one,
for it was a dark, chilly, earthy-smelling place, and something too
large, for a man so situated, to feel at home in. However, when
the momentary consternation of his surprise was over, he made light
of the accident, and resolved to feel his way up the stairs again,
and make himself as comfortable as he could in the gallery until
morning. As he turned to execute this purpose, he heard the clocks
strike three.

Any such invasion of a dead stillness as the striking of distant
clocks, causes it to appear the more intense and insupportable when
the sound has ceased. He listened with strained attention in the
hope that some clock, lagging behind its fellows, had yet to
strike, - looking all the time into the profound darkness before
him, until it seemed to weave itself into a black tissue, patterned
with a hundred reflections of his own eyes. But the bells had all