een so many things happen in so many long lives which were lived there;
people have come into the world and gone out of it again from those
square rooms with their little windows, and I believe if there are
ghosts who walk about in daylight I was only half deaf to their voices,
and heard much of what they tried to tell me that day. The rooms which
had looked empty at first were filled again with the old clergymen, who
met together with important looks and complacent dignity, and eager talk
about some minor point in theology that is yet unsettled; the awkward,
smiling couples, who came to be married; the mistress of the house, who
must have been a stately person in her day; the little children who,
under all their shyness, remembered the sugar-plums in the old parson's
pockets,--all these, and even the tall cane that must have stood in the
entry, were visible to my mind's eye. And I even heard a sermon from the
old preacher who died so long ago, on the beauty of a life well spent.

The rain fell steadily and there was no prospect of its stopping, though
I could see that the clouds were thinner and that it was only a shower.
In the kitchen I found an old chair which I pulled into the study, which
seemed more cheerful than the rest of the house, and then I remembered
that there were some bits of board in the kitchen also, and the thought
struck me that it would be good fun to make a fire in the old
fire-place. Everything seemed right about the chimney. I even went up
into the garret to look at it there, for I had no wish to set the
parsonage on fire, and I brought down a pile of old corn husks for
kindlings which I found on the garret floor. I built my fire carefully,
with two bricks for andirons, and when I lit it it blazed up gayly, I
poked it and it crackled, and though I was very well contented there
alone I wished for some friend to keep me company, it was selfish to
have so much pleasure with no one to share it. The rain came faster than
ever against the windows, and the room would have been dark if it had
not been for my fire, which threw out a magnificent yellow light over
the old brown wood-work. I leaned back and watched the dry sticks fall
apart in red coals and thought I might have to spend the night there,
for if it were a storm and not a shower I was several miles from home,
and a late October rain is not like a warm one in June to fall upon
one's shoulders. I could hear the house leaking when it rained less
h