Thin, dim, darkly gray, a particle at a time, it grew about him.

For some minutes his eyes seemed of themselves, without any commission from him, to make inquiry of his surroundings.

They discovered that, if he was in a coffin, or even in a sepulchre without a coffin, it was a large one: there was a wall--miles away! The light grew, and with it the conviction that he was in no sepulchre.

But there the consolation ceased, for the still growing light revealed no sign of ministration or comfort.
Above him was a bare, dirty, stained ceiling, with a hole in it, through which stuck skeleton ribs of lath; around him were bare, dirty-white walls, that seemed to grow out of the gray light of a wet morning as the natural deposit from such a solution.

Two slender poles, meant to support curtains, but without a rag of drapery upon them, rose at his feet, like the masts of a Charon's boat.