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<h2> CHAPTER II. THE MIRROR </h2>
<p>Nothing more happened for some days. I think it was about a week after,
when what I have now to tell took place.</p>
<p>I had often thought of the manuscript fragment, and repeatedly tried to
discover some way of releasing it, but in vain: I could not find out what
held it fast.</p>
<p>But I had for some time intended a thorough overhauling of the books in
the closet, its atmosphere causing me uneasiness as to their condition.
One day the intention suddenly became a resolve, and I was in the act of
rising from my chair to make a beginning, when I saw the old librarian
moving from the door of the closet toward the farther end of the room. I
ought rather to say only that I caught sight of something shadowy from
which I received the impression of a slight, stooping man, in a shabby
dress-coat reaching almost to his heels, the tails of which, disparting a
little as he walked, revealed thin legs in black stockings, and large feet
in wide, slipper-like shoes.</p>
<p>At once I followed him: I might be following a shadow, but I never doubted
I was following something. He went out of the library into the hall, and
across to the foot of the great staircase, then up the stairs to the first
floor, where lay the chief rooms. Past these rooms, I following close, he
continued his way, through a wide corridor, to the foot of a narrower
stair leading to the second floor. Up that he went also, and when I
reached the top, strange as it may seem, I found myself in a region almost
unknown to me. I never had brother or sister to incite to such romps as
make children familiar with nook and cranny; I was a mere child when my
guardian took me away; and I had never seen the house again until, about a
month before, I returned to take possession.</p>
<p>Through passage after passage we came to a door at the bottom of a winding
wooden stair, which we ascended. Every step creaked under my foot, but I
heard no sound from that of my guide. Somewhere in the middle of the stair
I lost sight of him, and from the top of it the shadowy shape was nowhere
visible. I could not even imagine I saw him. The place was full of
shadows, but he was not one of them.</p>
<p>I was in the main garret, with huge beams and rafters over my head, great
spaces around me, a door here and there in sight, and long vistas whose
gloom was thinned by a few lurking cobwebbed windows and small dusky
skylights. I gazed with a strange mingling of awe and pleasure: the wide
expanse of garret was my own, and unexplored!</p>
<p>In the middle of it stood an unpainted inclosure of rough planks, the door
of which was ajar. Thinking Mr. Raven might be there, I pushed the door,
and entered.</p>
<p>The small chamber was full of light, but such as dwells in places
deserted: it had a dull, disconsolate look, as if it found itself of no
use, and regretted having come. A few rather dim sunrays, marking their
track through the cloud of motes that had just been stirred up, fell upon
a tall mirror with a dusty face, old-fashioned and rather narrow—in
appearance an ordinary glass. It had an ebony frame, on the top of which
stood a black eagle, with outstretched wings, in his beak a golden chain,
from whose end hung a black ball.</p>
<p>I had been looking at rather than into the mirror, when suddenly I became
aware that it reflected neither the chamber nor my own person. I have an
impression of having seen the wall melt away, but what followed is enough
to account for any uncertainty:—could I have mistaken for a mirror
the glass that protected a wonderful picture?</p>
<p>I saw before me a wild country, broken and heathy. Desolate hills of no
great height, but somehow of strange appearance, occupied the middle
distance; along the horizon stretched the tops of a far-off mountain
range; nearest me lay a tract of moorland, flat and melancholy.</p>
<p>Being short-sighted, I stepped closer to examine the texture of a stone in
the immediate foreground, and in the act espied, hopping toward me with
solemnity, a large and ancient raven, whose purply black was here and
there softened with gray. He seemed looking for worms as he came. Nowise
astonished at the appearance of a live creature in a picture, I took
another step forward to see him better, stumbled over something—doubtless
the frame of the mirror—and stood nose to beak with the bird: I was
in the open air, on a houseless heath!</p>
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