ped their way into the ground-floor room. Here Mr Haredale
struck a light, and kindled a pocket taper he had brought with him for
the purpose. It was then, when the flame was full upon him, that the
locksmith saw for the first time how haggard, pale, and changed he
looked; how worn and thin he was; how perfectly his whole appearance
coincided with all that he had said so strangely as they rode along.
It was not an unnatural impulse in Gabriel, after what he had heard, to
note curiously the expression of his eyes. It was perfectly collected
and rational;--so much so, indeed, that he felt ashamed of his momentary
suspicion, and drooped his own when Mr Haredale looked towards him, as
if he feared they would betray his thoughts.

'Will you walk through the house?' said Mr Haredale, with a glance
towards the window, the crazy shutters of which were closed and
fastened. 'Speak low.'

There was a kind of awe about the place, which would have rendered it
difficult to speak in any other manner. Gabriel whispered 'Yes,' and
followed him upstairs.

Everything was just as they had seen it last. There was a sense of
closeness from the exclusion of fresh air, and a gloom and heaviness
around, as though long imprisonment had made the very silence sad. The
homely hangings of the beds and windows had begun to droop; the dust lay
thick upon their dwindling folds; and damps had made their way through
ceiling, wall, and floor. The boards creaked beneath their tread, as if
resenting the unaccustomed intrusion; nimble spiders, paralysed by the
taper's glare, checked the motion of their hundred legs upon the wall,
or dropped like lifeless things upon the ground; the death-watch ticked;
and the scampering feet of rats and mice rattled behind the wainscot.

As they looked about them on the decaying furniture, it was strange to
find how vividly it presented those to whom it had belonged, and
with whom it was once familiar. Grip seemed to perch again upon his
high-backed chair; Barnaby to crouch in his old favourite corner by the
fire; the mother to resume her usual seat, and watch him as of old. Even
when they could separate these objects from the phantoms of the mind
which they invoked, the latter only glided out of sight, but lingered
near them still; for then they seemed to lurk in closets and behind the
doors, ready to start out and suddenly accost them in well-remembered
tones.

They went downstairs, and again into the room they had ju