two rods of our measure of land,
surrounded the edifice; and this little plot was flanked by a low
hedge of privet, and encircled by a moat full of water, too wide to be
leaped with ease. Over that part of the moat which was in front of
the cottage door, was a small and narrow bridge, with ornamented
iron hand-rails, for the security of the passenger. But the colours,
originally so bright, with which the cottage had been decorated, had
now faded; symptoms of rapid decay were evident in the window-sills,
the door-jambs, and other wooden parts of the tenement, and many of
the white and blue tiles had fallen down, and had not been replaced.
That much care had once been bestowed upon this little tenement, was
as evident as that latterly it had been equally neglected.

The inside of the cottage, both on the basement and the floor above,
was divided into two larger rooms in front, and two smaller behind;
the rooms in front could only be called large in comparison with the
other two, as they were little more than twelve feet square, with but
one window to each. The upper floor was, as usual, appropriated to the
bedrooms; on the lower, the two smaller rooms were now used only as a
wash-house and a lumber-room; while one of the larger was fitted up as
a kitchen, and furnished with dressers, on which the metal utensils
for cookery shone clean and polished as silver. The room itself was
scrupulously neat; but the furniture, as well as the utensils, were
scanty. The boards of the floor were of a pure white, and so clean
that you might have laid anything down without fear of soiling it. A
strong deal table, two wooden-seated chairs, and a small easy couch,
which had been removed from one of the bedrooms upstairs, were all
the movables which this room contained. The other front room had been
fitted up as a parlour; but what might be the style of its furniture
was now unknown, for no eye had beheld the contents of that room for
nearly seventeen years, during which it had been hermetically sealed,
even to the inmates of the cottage.

The kitchen, which we have described, was occupied by two persons. One
was a woman, apparently about forty years of age, but worn down by
pain and suffering. She had evidently once possessed much beauty:
there were still the regular outlines, the noble forehead, and the
large dark eye; but there was a tenuity in her features, a wasted
appearance, such as to render the flesh transparent; her brow, when
s