unguessed, who might have to fight his way out of an alarmed household.
It was but the visit which he, Jasper Losely, Esquire, thought fit
to pay, however unceremoniously and unseasonably, to the house of a
father-in-law! At the worst, should he fail in finding Darrell, or
securing an unwitnessed interview--should he, instead, alarm the
household, it would be a proof of the integrity of his intentions that
he had no weapons save those which Nature bestows on the wild man as the
mightiest of her wild beasts. At night he mounted his horse, but went
out of his way, keeping the high-road for an hour or two, in order to
allow ample time for the farmers to have quitted the rent-feast, and the
old Manor-house to be hushed in sleep. At last, when he judged the coast
clear and the hour ripe, he wound back into the lane towards Fawley;
and when the spire of its hamlet-church came in sight through the
frosty starlit air, he dismounted--led the horse into one of the thick
beech-woods that make the prevailing characteristic of the wild country
round that sequestered dwelling-place--fastened the animal to a tree,
and stalked towards the park-pales on foot. Lightly, as a wolf enters
a sheepfold, he swung himself over the moss-grown fence; he gained the
buttresses of the great raw pile; high and clear above, from Darrell's
chamber, streamed the light; all the rest of the old house was closed
and dark, buried no doubt in slumber.

He is now in the hollows of the skeleton pile; he mounts the ladder;
the lock of the door before him yields to his rude implements but artful
hand. He is in the long gallery; the moonlight comes broad and clear
through the large casements. What wealth of art is on the walls! but how
profitless to the robber's greed. There, through the very halls which
the master had built in the day of his ambition, saying to himself,
"These are for far posterity," the step of Violence, it may be of
Murder, takes its stealthy way to the room of the childless man! Through
the uncompleted pile, towards the uncompleted life, strides the terrible
step.

The last door yields noiselessly. The small wooden corridor, narrow
as the drawbridge which in ancient fortresses was swung between the
commandant's room in the topmost story and some opposing wall, is before
him. And Darrell's own door is half open; lights on the table--logs
burning bright on the hearth. Cautiously Losely looked through the
aperture. Darrell was not there; the pl