seemed to rise up at its voice, like the spirits of the departed sweeping by, awful and indistinct.  These impressions soon became more vivid; they rushed on with greater rapidity:  I turned from the window, and was startled at the sudden moving of a shadow.  It was a faint long-drawn figure of myself on the floor and opposite wall.  Ashamed of my fears, I was preparing to quit the apartment when my attention was arrested by a drawing which I had once scrawled, and stuck against the wall with all the ardour of a first achievement.  It owed its preservation to an unlucky, but effectual, contrivance of mine for securing its perpetuity:  a paste-brush, purloined from the kitchen, had made all fast; and the piece, alike impregnable to assaults or siege, withstood every effort for its removal.  In fact, this could not be accomplished without at the same time tearing off a portion from the dingy papering of the room, and leaving a disagreeable void, instead of my sprawling performance.  With the less evil it appeared each succeeding occupant had been contented; and the drawing had stood its ground in spite of dust and dilapidation.  I felt wishful for the possession of so valuable a memorial of past exploits.  I examined it again and again, but not a single corner betrayed symptoms of lesion:  it stuck bolt upright; and the dun squat figures portrayed on it appeared to leer at me most provokingly.  Not a slip or tear presented itself as vantage-ground for the projected attack; and I had no other resource left of gaining possession than what may be denominated the Caesarean mode.  I accordingly took out my knife, and commenced operations by cutting out at the same time a portion of the ornamental papering from the wall commensurate with the picture.  I looked upon it with a sort of superstitious reverence; and I have always thought that the strong and eager impulse I felt for the possession of this hideous daub proceeded from a far different source than mere fondness for the memorials of childhood.  Be that as it may, I am a firm believer in a special Providence; and that, too, as discovered in the most trivial as well as the most important concerns of life.  It was whilst cutting down upon what seemed like wainscoting, over which the papering of the room had been laid, that my knife glanced on something much harder than the rest.  Turning aside my spoils, I saw what through the dusk appeared very like the hinge of a concealed door.  My curiosity was roused, and I made a hasty pull, which at once drew down a mighty fragment from the wall, consisting of plaster, paper, and rotten canvas; and some minutes elapsed ere the subsiding cloud of dust enabled me to discern the terra incognita I had just uncovered.  Sure enough there was a door, and as surely did the spirit of enterprise prompt me to open it.  With difficulty I accomplished my purpose; it yielded at length to my efforts; but the noise of the half-corroded hinges, grating and shrieking on their rusty pivots, may be