Roger Ridley met them at the gate, and led Murray to the library where his father was. "Find your way to the drawing-room, Charley; no one expects you or me to know anything," he said. "This is the way to my father's sanctum," and he pushed back the curtains and opened the oak door. The passages were panelled oak, dark, with a glistening of reflection about, while heavy curtains were hung here and there to shut out draughts and noise from the squire's sanctuary. Murray, who was used to the serious luxury of old wainscot and pictures, followed him silently, with less sense of the incongruity of the position than if they had taken the other turn which led to Miss Ridley's presence-chamber, the heart of the house. The squire in his library was not necessarily more awe-inspiring than the head of a college. Yet when he found himself in the old lofty room, clothed with books, Abel felt that to himself no head of a college could be so alarming as this old gentleman, whose keen eyes seemed to search through and through him, with suspicion in them, or so at last it seemed to his guilty soul. He remembered being brought there once before for some supposed offence to endure the inspection of the squire's keen eyes. It seemed the very same look which pierced him to the midriff now, and Mr Ridley's words were not reassuring. "How do you do, Mr Murray?" he said; "I am very glad to see you. Such visitors as you are rare in a country place. But God bless me, your face is familiar! I think I must have seen you before?" Abel's cheeks grew crimson again, but he answered bravely with a smile, "I do not think I have ever had that honour; but we are always knocking up against each other, the Americans say, in this little island." At this gentle pleasantry the squire laughed, or pretended to laugh. "A curious people the Americans," he said--"very odd people. I have had one or two of them down here. This is the sort of thing they don't understand. It's a sad puzzle to them; existing for so many centuries and yet not much of a thing after all," said the squire, waving his hands towards his surroundings. He kept a corner of his eye upon Abel to watch how he responded to this challenge. "No, not much of a thing," said Murray, looking round upon it with veneration,--"only the most perfect old house in England. It may not be a very great matter, as you say, but there is nothing else like it in the world."