You will understand that I am able _now_ to analyze and
put the thing into words; but _then_ I did not even know my chief reason
for saying nothing; let alone appreciate its possible significance.
"It was my mother, after all, who put part of my vague sensations
into words:--
"'What a disagreeable smell!' she exclaimed, and was silent a moment,
looking at me. Then:--'You feel there's something wrong?' still looking
at me, very quietly but with a little, nervous note of questioning
expectancy.
"'I don't know,' I said. 'I can't understand it, unless you've really
been walking about in your sleep.'
"'The smell,' she said.
"'Yes,' I replied. 'That's what puzzles me too. I'll take a walk through
the house; but I don't suppose it's anything.'
"I lit her candle, and taking the lamp, I went through the other
bedrooms, and afterward all over the house, including the three
underground cellars, which was a little trying to the nerves, seeing that
I was more nervous than I would admit.
"Then I went back to my mother, and told her there was really nothing to
bother about; and, you know, in the end, we talked ourselves into
believing it was nothing. My mother would not agree that she might have
been sleepwalking; but she was ready to put the door opening down to the
fault of the latch, which certainly snicked very lightly. As for the
knocks, they might be the old warped woodwork of the house cracking a
bit, or a mouse rattling a piece of loose plaster.
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