reference to them,
as his calmer sense suggested. But Arthur was too young to treat the
ridicule even of his inferiors with contempt--too young not to fear the
momentary humiliation of falsifying his own foolish boast more than he
feared the trial of watching out the long night in the same chamber with
the dead.

"It is but a few hours," he thought to himself, "and I can get away the
first thing in the morning."

He was looking toward the occupied bed as that idea passed through his
mind, and the sharp, angular eminence made in the clothes by the dead
man's upturned feet again caught his eye. He advanced and drew the
curtains, purposely abstaining, as he did so, from looking at the face
of the corpse, lest he might unnerve himself at the outset by fastening
some ghastly impression of it on his mind. He drew the curtain very
gently, and sighed involuntarily as he closed it.

"Poor fellow," he said, almost as sadly as if he had known the man. "Ah!
poor fellow!"

He went next to the window. The night was black, and he could see
nothing from it. The rain still pattered heavily against the glass. He
inferred, from hearing it, that the window was at the back of the house,
remembering that the front was sheltered from the weather by the court
and the buildings over it.

While he was still standing at the window--for even the dreary rain
was a relief, because of the sound it made; a relief, also, because
it moved, and had some faint suggestion, in consequence, of life and
companionship in it--while he was standing at the window, and looking
vacantly into the black darkness outside, he heard a distant church
clock strike ten. Only ten! How was he to pass the time till the house
was astir the next morning?

Under any other circumstances he would have gone down to the
public-house parlor, would have called for his grog, and would have
laughed and talked with the company assembled as familiarly as if he had
known them all his life. But the very thought of whiling away the time
in this manner was now distasteful to him. The new situation in which he
was placed seemed to have altered him to himself already. Thus far
his life had been the common, trifling, prosaic, surface-life of a
prosperous young man, with no troubles to conquer and no trials to face.
He had lost no relation whom he loved, no friend whom he treasured.
Till this night, what share he had of the immortal inheritance that is
divided among us all had lain dorma