Page:Edgar Huntly, or The Sleep Walker.djvu/224

 and ambiguous: no adequate cause of so quick and absolute a transition occurred to me. Having gained some warmth, and lingered some ten or twenty minutes in this uncertainty, I determined to explore the other apartments of the building: I knew not what might betide in my absence, or what I might encounter in my search to justify precaution, and therefore kept the gun in my hand. I snatched a candle from the table, and proceeded into two other apartments on the first floor and the kitchen: neither was inhabited, though chairs and tables were arranged in their usual order, and no traces of violence or hurry were apparent.

Having gained the foot of the staircase, I knocked; but my knocking was wholly disregarded. A light had appeared in an upper chamber; it was not, indeed, in one of those apartments which the family permanently occupied, but in that which, according to rural custom, was reserved for guests; but it indubitably betokened the presence of some being by whom my doubts might be solved: these doubts were too tormenting to allow of scruples and delay—I mounted the stairs.

At each chamber door I knocked, but I knocked in vain; I tried to open, but found them to be locked. I at length reached the entrance of that in which a light had been discovered: here it was certain that some one would be found; but here, as well as elsewhere, my knocking was unnoticed.

To enter this chamber was audacious; but no other expedient was afforded me to determine whether the house had any inhabitants: I therefore entered, though with caution and reluctance. No one was within; but there were sufficient traces of some person who had lately been here. On the table stood a travelling escritoir, open, with pens and inkstand; a chair was placed before it, and a candle on the right hand. Such an apparatus was rarely seen in this country: some traveller, it seemed, occupied this room, though the rest of the mansion was deserted. The pilgrim, as these appearances testified, was of no vulgar order, and belonged not to the class of periodical and every-day guests.