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At the request of Usher, I personally aided him in the arrangements for
the temporary entombment. The body having been encoffined, we two alone
bore it to its rest. The vault in which we placed it (and which had
been so long unopened that our torches, half smothered in its oppressive
atmosphere, gave us little opportunity for investigation) was small,
damp, and entirely without means of admission for light; lying, at great
depth, immediately beneath that portion of the building in which was my
own sleeping apartment. It had been used, apparently, in remote feudal
times, for the worst purposes of a donjon-keep, and, in later days, as a
place of deposit for powder, or some other highly combustible substance,
as a portion of its floor, and the whole interior of a long archway
through which we reached it, were carefully sheathed with copper. The
door, of massive iron, had been, also, similarly protected. Its immense
weight caused an unusually sharp grating sound, as it moved upon its
hinges.
Having deposited our mournful burden upon tressels within this region of
horror, we partially turned aside the yet unscrewed lid of the coffin,
and looked upon the face of the tenant. A striking similitude between
the brother and sister now first arrested my attention; and Usher,
divining, perhaps, my thoughts, murmured out some few words from which
I learned that the deceased and himself had been twins, and that
sympathies of a scarcely intelligible nature had always existed between
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