If I prized life and limb I must seek some other method of egress.

I at once put my apprehensions in my pocket and entered upon my self imposed task.
A single glance was sufficient to exhaust the resources of the empty garret in which I found myself.

Two or three old chairs piled in one corner, a rusty stove or so, a heap of tattered and decaying clothing, were all that met my gaze.

Taking my way, then, at once to the ladder, whose narrow ends projecting above a hole in the garret floor, seemed to proffer the means of reaching the rooms below, I proceeded to descend into what to my excited imagination looked like a gulf of darkness.

It proved, however, to be nothing more nor less than an unlighted hall of small dimensions, with a stair-case at one end and a door at the other, which, upon opening I found myself in a large, square room whose immense four-post bedstead entirely denuded of its usual accompaniments of bed and bolster at once struck my eye and for a moment held it enchained.
There were other articles in the room; a disused bureau, a rocking chair, even a table, but nothing had such a ghostly look as that antique bedstead with its curtains of calico tied back over its naked framework, like rags draped from the bare bones of a skeleton.