ortress cut off. Thus cumbrously but
ineffectually caparisoned, I peramulate the lower stories of the
house in darkness, in search of the disturber of Mrs. B.'s repose,
which, I am well convinced, is behind the wainscot of her own
apartment, and nowhere else. The pantry, I need not say, is as
silent as the grave, and about as cold. The great clock in the
kitchen looks spectral enough by the light of the expiring embers,
but there is nothing there with life except black-beetles, which
crawl in countless numbers over my naked ankles. There is a noise in
the cellar such as Mrs. B. would at once identify with the suppressed
converse of anticipated burglars, but which I recognise in a moment
as the dripping of the small-beer cask, whose tap is troubled with a
nervous disorganisation of that kind. The dining-room is chill and
cheerless; a ghostly armchair is doing the grim honours of the table
to three other vacant seats, and dispensing hospitality in the shape
of a mouldy orange and some biscuits, which I remember to have left
in some disgust, about----Hark! the clicking of a revolver? No! the
warning of the great clock--one, two, three.... What a frightful
noise it makes in the startled ear of night! Twelve o'clock. I left
this dining-room, then, but three hours and a-half ago; it certainly
does not look like the same room now. The drawing-room is also far
from wearing its usual snug and comfortable appearance. Could we
possibly have all been sitting in the relative positions to one
another which these chairs assume? Or since we were there, has some
spiritual company, with no eye for order left among them, taken
advantage of the remains of our fire to hold a _reunion_? They are
here even at this moment perhaps, and their gentlemen have not yet
come up from the dining-room. I shudder from head to foot, partly at
the bare idea of such a thing, partly from the naked fact of my
exceedingly unclothed condition. They do say that in the very passage
which I have now to cross in order to get to Mrs. B. again, my
great-grandfather "walks"; in compensation, I suppose, for having
been prevented by gout from taking that species of exercise while he
was alive. There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt
of in your philosophy, I think, as I approach this spot; but I do not
say so, for I am well-nigh speechless with the cold: yes, the cold.
It is only my teeth that chatter. What a scream that was! There it
comes again,