I slept at the George Inn--dreaming (as many a young wayfarer in those lands has since done), of Ivanhoe and Rebecca, and border wars and _Old Mortality_. Next morning, after a breakfast upon trout taken from some near stream (very likely the Yarrow or the Gala-water), I strolled two miles or so along the road which followed the Tweed bank upon the southern side, and by a green foot-gate entered the Abbotsford grounds. The forest trees--not over high at that time--were those which the master had planted. From his favorite outdoor seat, sheltered by a thicket of arbor-vitæ, could be caught a glimpse of the rippled surface of the Tweed and of the turrets of the house. It was all very quiet--quiet in the wood-walks; quiet as you approached the court-yard; the master dead; the family gone; I think there was a yelp from some young hound in an out-building, and a twitter from some birds I did not know; there was the unceasing murmur of the river. Besides these sounds, the silence was unbroken; and when I rang the bell at the entrance door, the jangle of it was very startling; startling a little terrier, too, whose quick, sharp bark rang noisily through the outer court. Only an old house-keeper was in charge, who had fallen into that dreadful parrot-like way of telling visitors what things were best worth seeing--which frets one terribly. What should you or I care (fresh from _Guy Mannering_ or _Kenilworth_) whether a bit of carving came from Jedburgh or Kelso? or about the jets in the chandelier, or the way in which a Russian Grand Duke wrote his name in the visitors’ book? But when we catch sight of the desk at which the master wrote, or of the chair in which he sat, and of his shoes and coat and cane--looking as if they might have been worn yesterday--these seem to bring us nearer to the man who has written so much to cheer and to charm the world. There was, too, a little box in the corridor, simple and iron-bound, with the line written below it, “Post will close at two.” It was as if we had heard the master of the house say it. Perhaps the notice was in his handwriting (he had been active there in 1831-2--just thirteen years before)--perhaps not; but--somehow--more than the library, or the portrait bust, or the chatter of the well-meaning house-keeper, it brought back the halting old gentleman in his shooting-coat, and with ivory-headed cane--hobbling with a vigorous step along the corridor, to post in that iron-bound box a packet--maybe a chapter of _Woodstock_.