When Peter returned with a candle, Colin obtained a dim vision of the objects about him. The place was so black, for want of whitewash, that its limits seemed almost indefinable every way, save overhead, and there the close proximity of his crown to the rafters reminded him that no less care would be required in humouring Mr. Veriquear's house than in pleasing its master; while the quality and amount of its contents almost led him to believe he had entered some grand national closet, in which was deposited all the unserviceable stuff, the scraps, odds and ends of the general community. The reason of this was, that Peter Veriquear dealt in almost everything he could turn a penny by, and, being somewhat large in his speculations, always had a vast mass of property in substance upon his premises. 4 As a new emigrant to the wilds of North America betakes himself to an accurate survey of his locality before he pitches his tent, and commences operations, so, wisely, did Peter Veriquear conduct Colin over the whole of his territory that night, in order that he thereby might become acquainted early with the wide field of his future labours, Through a dirty unpaved yard behind, he conducted him over various shed-like warehouses, stored with every imaginable description of rags, sorted and unsorted, with bottles of all degrees of bodily extension, from the slender pale-faced phial to the middle-sized “mixture” and the corpulent “stout;” and on the ground-floor, into a deathly region of bones, which made the moveless air smell grave-like, and stored the prompt imagination with as many spectres of slaughtered cattle and skeleton horses, as might garnish the magic circles of twenty German tales. In a wide rambling loft, accessible through this place by a step-ladder, and open to the laths of the roof on which the tiles were hung. Colin observed a small bed and a chair or two, with a broken piece of looking-glass fixed on the wall with nails, in order, as it might appear from the deserted character of the place, that the tenant, if weary of being alone, might contemplate a representative of himself, in lack of better company. “Is this room occupied?” asked Colin. “When there is anybody in it,--as there ought to be every night,” replied Veriquear. “It is my business to keep these premises safe, the same as it is other people's to rob them if they could.” “Why, surely, sir,” objected Colin, with some slight astonishment, “nobody would think of stealing such things as there are here!” “What is worth buying and selling is worth stealing. _I_ should think so, if it were my affair to rob; just as I think it worth guarding, being my business to hinder robbery.” “Then, shall I sleep here?” demanded Colin. “Well,” responded Mr. Veriquear, “I suppose you will, if you can. You want sleep, like me, I dare say; but that you must manage yourself. _I_ can't make you sleep,--so it's no concern of mine.”