AT THE TOP OF THE CHIMNEY-STAIR.

I fear my reader may have thought me too long occupied with the
explanatory foundations of my structure: I shall at once proceed to
raise its walls of narrative. Whatever further explanations may be
necessary, can be applied as buttresses in lieu of a broader base.

One Sunday--it was his custom of a Sunday--I fancy I was then somewhere
about six years of age--my uncle rose from the table after our homely
dinner, took me by the hand, and led me to the dark door with the long
arrow-headed hinges, and up the winding stone stair which I never
ascended except with him or my aunt. At the top was another rugged
door, and within that, one covered with green baize. The last opened on
what had always seemed to me a very paradise of a room. It was
old-fashioned enough; but childhood is of any and every age, and it was
not old-fashioned to me--only intensely cosy and comfortable. The first
thing my eyes generally rested upon was an old bureau, with a book-case
on the top of it, the glass-doors of which were lined with faded red
silk. The next thing I would see was a small tent-bed, with the whitest
of curtains, and enchanting fringes of white ball-tassels. The bed was
covered with an equally charming counterpane of silk patchwork. The
next object was the genius of the place, in a high, close, easy-chair,
covered with some dark stuff, against which her face, surrounded with
its widow's cap, of ancient form, but dazzling whiteness, was strongly
relieved. How shall I describe the shrunken, yet delicate, the
gracious, if not graceful form, and the face from which extreme old age
had not wasted half the loveliness? Yet I always beheld it with an
indescribable sensation, one of whose elements I can isolate and
identify as a faint fear. Perhaps this arose partly from the fact that,