When he awoke it was still dark, for the winter was just begun; but he heard—or did he only dream that he heard?—a clock in some neighboring steeple strike six. He knew that he must get up, for his business upon that day demanded early attention.
He sat up in bed, yawned, stretched his arms once or twice, and then, flinging the covering aside, he leaped to the floor. He fell, and hurt his arm somewhat. Strange that he should have miscalculated the distance! The bed seemed more than twice as high from the floor as it should be. It was too dark to see distinctly, so he crept to the bed with extended hands, and felt it. Yes, it was at least four feet from the floor, and, very oddly, it had long, slim posts, such as bedsteads used to have, instead of the low, carved footboard, and the high, postless headboard, which belonged to the bedstead upon which he had slept in recent years. Ephraim resolved to strike a light. He groped his way to the table, and tried to find the match-box. It was not there; he could not discover it upon the bureau either. But he found something else, which he did not recognize at first, but which a more careful examination with his fingers told him was a flint and steel. He was vexed that any one should play such a trick upon him. How could he ever succeed in lighting the gas with a flint and steel!
But he resolved to try, and he moved over towards the gas-bracket by the bureau. It was not there! He passed his cold hand over a square yard of the wall, where the bracket used to be, but it had vanished. It actually seemed, too, as if there was no paper on the wall, for the whitewash scaled off beneath his fingers.
Perplexed and angry, Ephraim was about to replace the flint and steel upon the bureau, and to dress in the dark, when his hand encountered a candlestick. It contained a candle. He determined to try to light it. He struck the flint upon the steel at least a dozen times, in the way he remembered doing so often when he was a boy, but the sparks refused to catch the tinder. He struck again and again, until he became really warm with effort and indignation, and at last he succeeded.
It was only a poor, slim tallow candle, and Ephraim thought the light was not much better than the darkness, it was so dim and flickering and dismal. He was conscious then that the room was chill, although his body felt so warm; and, for fear he should catch cold, he thought he would open the register, and let in some warm air. The register had disappeared! There, right before him, was a vast old-fashioned fireplace filled with wood. By what means the transformation had been effected, he could not imagine. But he was not greatly displeased.
“I always did like an open wood fire,” he said, “and now I will have a roaring one.”
So he touched the flame of the candle to the light kindling-wood, and in a moment it was afire.
“I will wash while it is burning up,” said Ephraim.
He went to the place where he thought he should find the fixed wash-stand, with hot and cold water running from the pipes, but he was amazed to find that it had followed the strange fashion of the room, and had gone also! There was an old hand-basin, with a cracked china pitcher, standing upon a movable wash-stand, but the water in the pitcher had been turned to solid ice.
With an exclamation of impatience and indignation, Ephraim placed the pitcher between the andirons, close to the wood in the chimney-place; and he did so with smarting eyes, for the flue was cold, and volumes of smoke were pouring out into the room. In a few moments he felt that he should suffocate unless he could get some fresh air, so he resolved to open the upper sash of the window.