THE HAUNTED MIND

By Nathaniel Hawthorne



What a singular moment is the first one, when you have hardly begun to
recollect yourself after starting from midnight slumber! By unclosing
your eyes so suddenly, you seem to have surprised the personages of
your dream in full convocation round your bed, and catch one broad
glance at them before they can flit into obscurity. Or, to vary the
metaphor, you find yourself, for a single instant, wide awake in that
realm of illusions, whither sleep has been the passport, and behold
its ghostly inhabitants and wondrous scenery, with a perception of
their strangeness, such as you never attain while the dream is
undisturbed. The distant sound of a church-clock is borne faintly on
the wind. You question with yourself, half seriously, whether it has
stolen to your waking ear from some gray tower, that stood within the
precincts of your dream. While yet in suspense, another clock flings
its heavy clang over the slumbering town, with so full and distinct a
sound, and such a long murmur in the neighboring air, that you are
certain it must proceed from the steeple at the nearest corner. You
count the strokes--one--two, and there they cease, with a booming
sound, like the gathering of a third stroke within the bell.

If you could choose an hour of wakefulness out of the whole night, it
would be this. Since your sober bedtime, at eleven, you have had rest
enough to take off the pressure of yesterday's fatigue; while before
you, till the sun comes from "far Cathay" to brighten your window,
there is almost the space of a summer night; one hour to be spent in