Thus were the little family going on; the Doctor, I regret to say, growing more morose, self-involved, and unattainable since the disappearance of the schoolmaster than before; more given up to his one plaything, the great spider; less frequently even than before coming out of the grim seclusion of his moodiness, to play with the children, though they would often be sensible of his fierce eyes fixed upon them, and start and feel incommoded by the intensity of his regard;--thus things were going on, when one day there was really again a visitor, and not a dilapidated patient, to the grim Doctor’s study. Crusty Hannah brought up his name as Mr. Hammond, and the Doctor--filling his everlasting pipe, meanwhile, and ordering Hannah to give him a coal (perhaps this was the circumstance that made people say he had imps to bring him coals from Tophet)--ordered him to be shown up. [Endnote: 2.] A fresh-colored, rather young man [Endnote: 3] entered the study, a person of rather cold and ungraceful manners, yet genial-looking enough; at least, not repulsive. He was dressed in rather a rough, serviceable travelling-dress, and except for a nicely brushed hat, and unmistakably white linen, was rather careless in attire. You would have thought twice, perhaps, before deciding him to be a gentleman, but finally would have decided that he was; one great token being, that the singular aspect of the room into which he was ushered, the spider festoonery, and other strange accompaniments, the grim aspect of the Doctor himself, and the beauty and intelligence of his two companions, and even that horrific weaver, the great dangling spider,--neither one nor all of these called any expression of surprise to the stranger’s face. “Your name is Hammond?” begins the Doctor, with his usual sparseness of ornamental courtesy. [Endnote: 4.] The stranger bowed. “An Englishman, I perceive,” continued the Doctor, but nowise intimating that the fact of being a countryman was any recommendation in his eyes. “Yes, an Englishman,” replied Hammond; “a briefless barrister, [Endnote: 5] in fact, of Lincoln’s Inn, who, having little or nothing to detain him at home, has come to spend a few idle months in seeing the new republic which has been made out of English substance.” “And what,” continued Doctor Grim, not a whit relaxing the repulsiveness of his manner, and scowling askance at the stranger,--“what may have drawn on me the good fortune of being compelled to make my time idle, because yours is so?”