gel, having seen it some thirteen years before, found that
his memory had dimmed the true vision of the place considerably; that
where he had builded romance, romance was not. Where he had softened
harsh outlines, and peopled dark corridors with his own fancies, those
same outlines had taken on a grimness that he could hardly believe
possible, and the long, dark corridors of his mind's vision were longer
and darker and lonelier than he had ever imagined any spot could be.

It was a handsome place, no doubt, in its gaunt, gray, prisonlike way.
And, too, it had a moat and a miniature portcullis that rather tickled
his boyish fancy. The furnishings, however, had an appalling grimness
that took the very heart out of one. Chairs which seemed to have grown in
their places for centuries crowded the corners of hallway and stairs like
gigantic nightmares of their original prototypes. Monstrous curtains of
red brocade, grown purple with the years, seemed to hang from every
window and door crowding out the light and air. The carpets were thick
and dark and had lost all sign of pattern in the dull gloom of the
centuries.

It was, in fact, a house that would create ghosts. The atmosphere was
alive with that strange sensation of disembodied spirits which some
very old houses seem to possess. Narrow, slit-like windows in perfect
keeping with the architecture and the needs of the period in which it was
built--if not with modern ideas of hygiene and health--kept the rooms
dark and musty. When Nigel first entered the place through the great
front door thrown open by the solemn-faced butler, who he learned had
been kept on from his uncle's time, he felt as though he were entering
his own tomb. When the door shut he shuddered as the light and sunshine
vanished.

The first night he hardly slept a wink. His bed was a huge four-poster,
girt about with plush hangings like over-ripe plums, that shut him in as
though he were in some monstrous Victorian trinket box. A post creaked at
every turn he made in its downy softnesses, and being used to the light,
camp-like furniture of an Indian bungalow he got up, took an eiderdown
with him, and spent the rest of the hours upon a sofa drawn up beside an
open window.

"That people could live in such places!" he told himself, over and over
again. "No wonder my poor old uncle disappeared! Any self-respecting
Christian would. There'll be some slight alterations made in Merriton
Towers before I'm many da