----"'

hummed the old colonel, for it was Muddleton himself; and the groom
pursued his way without further questioning. Whereupon two thoughts took
possession of my brain: one of which was, what peculiar organisation it
is which makes certain old people who have nothing to do early risers;
the other, what offence had I committed to induce the master of the
chateau to plot my sudden death.

The former has been a puzzle to me all my life. What a blessing should
sleep be to that class of beings who do nothing when awake; how they
should covet those drowsy hours that give, as it were, a sanction to
indolence; with what anxiety they ought to await the fall of day, as
announcing the period when they become the equals of their fellow-men;
and with what terror they should look forward to the time when the busy
world is up and stirring, and their incapacity and slothfulness only
become more glaring from contrast! Would not any one say that such
people would naturally cultivate sleep as their comforter? Should they
not hug their pillow as the friend of their bosom? On the contrary,
these are invariably your early risers. Every house where I have ever
been on a visit has had at least one of these troubled and troublesome
spirits--the torment of Boots, the horror of housemaids. Their chronic
cough forms a duet with the inharmonious crowing of the young cock, who
for lack of better knowledge proclaims day a full hour before his time.
Their creaking shoes are the accompaniment to the scrubbing of brass
fenders and the twigging of carpets, the jarring sounds of opening
shutters and the cranking discord of a hall door chain; their heavy step
sounds like a nightmare's tread through the whole sleeping house. And
what is the object of all this? What new fact have they acquired; what
difficult question have they solved; whom have they made happier or
wiser or better? Not Betty the cook, certainly, whose morning levee of
beggars they have most unceremoniously scattered and scared; not Mary
the housemaid, who, unaccustomed to be caught _en deshabille_, is cross
the whole day after, though he was 'only an elderly gentleman, and wore
spectacles'; not Richard, who cleaned their shoes by candle-light; nor
the venerable butler, who from shame's sake is up and dressed, but who,
still asleep, stands with his corkscrew in his hand, under the vague
impression that it is a late supper-party.

These people, too, have always a consequential, self-sat