oned the prediction
he fretfully changed the subject. It was just the same with our chaplain
when I spoke to him. He said the portrait had been done centuries before
my uncle was born, and called the prophecy doggerel and nonsense. I
used to argue with him on the latter point, asking why we Catholics,
who believed that the gift of working miracles had never departed from
certain favored persons, might not just as well believe that the gift
of prophecy had never departed, either? He would not dispute with me; he
would only say that I must not waste time in thinking of such trifles;
that I had more imagination than was good for me, and must suppress
instead of exciting it. Such advice as this only irritated my curiosity.
I determined secretly to search throughout the oldest uninhabited part
of the Abbey, and to try if I could not find out from forgotten family
records what the portrait was, and when the prophecy had been first
written or uttered. Did you ever pass a day alone in the long-deserted
chambers of an ancient house?"

"Never! such solitude as that is not at all to my taste."

"Ah! what a life it was when I began my search. I should like to live it
over again. Such tempting suspense, such strange discoveries, such wild
fancies, such inthralling terrors, all belonged to that life. Only think
of breaking open the door of a room which no living soul had entered
before you for nearly a hundred years; think of the first step forward
into a region of airless, awful stillness, where the light falls faint
and sickly through closed windows and rotting curtains; think of the
ghostly creaking of the old floor that cries out on you for treading on
it, step as softly as you will; think of arms, helmets, weird tapestries
of by-gone days, that seem to be moving out on you from the walls as
you first walk up to them in the dim light; think of prying into great
cabinets and iron-clasped chests, not knowing what horrors may appear
when you tear them open; of poring over their contents till twilight
stole on you and darkness grew terrible in the lonely place; of trying
to leave it, and not being able to go, as if something held you; of wind
wailing at you outside; of shadows darkening round you, and closing you
up in obscurity within--only think of these things, and you may imagine
the fascination of suspense and terror in such a life as mine was in
those past days."

(I shrank from imagining that life: it was bad enough to see i