What is the furniture? An antique chair,--one chair, no more. A table,
many-footed, of dark wood; it holds writing-materials, a book, too, on
its face, with the dust gathered on its back. There is, moreover, a
sort of antique box, or coffer, of some dark wood, that seems to have
been wrought or carved with skill, wondrous skill, of some period when
the art of carving wainscot with arms and devices was much practised;
so that on this coffer--some six feet long it is, and two or three
broad--most richly wrought, you see faces in relief of knight and dame,
lords, heraldic animals; some story, very likely, told, almost
revelling in Gothic sculpture of wood, like what we have seen on the
marble sarcophagus of the old Greeks. It has, too, a lock, elaborately
ornamented and inlaid with silver.

What else; only the spider's webs spinning strangely over everything;
over that light which comes into the room through the stone; over
everything. And now we see, in a corner, a strange great spider
curiously variegated. The ugly, terrible, seemingly poisonous thing
makes us shudder. [Endnote: 3.]

What, else? There are pistols; they lie on the coffer! There is a
curiously shaped Italian dagger, of the kind which in a groove has
poison that makes its wound mortal. On the old mantel-piece, over the
fireplace, there is a vial in which are kept certain poisons. It would
seem as if some one had meditated suicide; or else that the foul fiend
had put all sorts of implements of self-destruction in his way; so
that, in some frenzied moment, he might kill himself.

But the inmate! There he is; but the frenzied alarm in which we last
saw him seems to have changed its character. No throb, now; no passion;
no frenzy of fear or despair. He sits dull and motionless. See; his