The footstep had in it a ghost-like solemnity and tardiness.

This phantom vanished in a moment, and yielded place to more humble conjectures.

A human being approached, whose office and commission were inscrutable.

That we were strangers to each other was easily imagined; but how would my appearance, in this remote chamber, and loaded with another's property, be interpreted?
Did he enter the house after me, or was he the tenant of some chamber hitherto unvisited; whom my entrance had awakened from his trance and called from his couch?
In the confusion of my mind, I still held my burden uplifted.

To have placed it on the floor, and encountered this visitant, without this equivocal token about me, was the obvious proceeding.