n, "and have you, his relation, never heard
of Mr. Clarke since he left the town? Strange!--this room, this very
room was the one Mr. Clarke occupied, and next to this,--here--(opening
a door) was his bed-chamber!"

It was not without powerful emotion that Walter found himself thus
within the apartment of his lost father. What a painful, what a
gloomy, yet sacred interest every thing around instantly assumed! The
old-fashioned and heavy chairs--the brown wainscot walls--the little
cupboard recessed as it were to the right of the fire-place, and piled
with morsels of Indian china and long taper wine glasses--the small
window-panes set deep in the wall, giving a dim view of a bleak and
melancholy-looking garden in the rear--yea, the very floor he trod--the
very table on which he leant--the very hearth, dull and fireless as
it was, opposite his gaze--all took a familiar meaning in his eye, and
breathed a household voice into his ear. And when he entered the inner
room, how, even to suffocation, were those strange, half sad, yet not
all bitter emotions increased. There was the bed on which his father had
rested on the night before--what? perhaps his murder! The bed, probably
a relic from the castle, when its antique furniture was set up to public
sale, was hung with faded tapestry, and above its dark and polished
summit were hearselike and heavy trappings. Old commodes of rudely
carved oak, a discoloured glass in a japan frame, a ponderous arm-chair
of Elizabethan fashion, and covered with the same tapestry as the bed,
altogether gave that uneasy and sepulchral impression to the mind so
commonly produced by the relics of a mouldering and forgotten antiquity.

"It looks cheerless, Sir," said the owner, "but then we have not had any
regular lodger for years; it is just the same as when Mr. Clarke lived
here. But bless you, Sir, he made the dull rooms look gay enough. He
was a blithesome gentleman. He and his friends, Mr. Houseman especially,
used to make the walls ring again when they were over their cups!"

"It might have been better for Mr. Clarke," said the Curate, "had he
chosen his comrades with more discretion. Houseman was not a creditable,
perhaps not a safe companion."

"That was no business of mine then," quoth the lodging-letter; "but it
might be now, since I have been a married man!"

The Curate smiled, "Perhaps you, Mr. Moor, bore a part in those revels?"

"Why, indeed, Mr. Clarke would occasionally make me