"And now," said the Curate, pointing to a decent house, "we have reached the lodging Clarke occupied in the town!" An old man of respectable appearance opened the door, and welcomed the Curate and his companion with an air of cordial respect which attested the well-deserved popularity of the former. "We have come," said the Curate, "to ask you some questions respecting Daniel Clarke, whom you remember as your lodger. This gentleman is a relation of his, and interested deeply in his fate!" "What, Sir!" quoth the old man, "and have you, his relation, never heard of Mr. Clarke since he left the town? Strange!--this room, this very room was the one Mr. Clarke occupied, and next to this,--here--(opening a door) was his bed-chamber!" It was not without powerful emotion that Walter found himself thus within the apartment of his lost father. What a painful, what a gloomy, yet sacred interest every thing around instantly assumed! The old-fashioned and heavy chairs--the brown wainscot walls--the little cupboard recessed as it were to the right of the fire-place, and piled with morsels of Indian china and long taper wine glasses--the small window-panes set deep in the wall, giving a dim view of a bleak and melancholy-looking garden in the rear--yea, the very floor he trod--the very table on which he leant--the very hearth, dull and fireless as it was, opposite his gaze-- all took a familiar meaning in his eye, and breathed a household voice into his ear. And when he entered the inner room, how, even to suffocation, were those strange, half sad, yet not all bitter emotions increased. There was the bed on which his father had rested on the night before--what? perhaps his murder! The bed, probably a relic from the castle, when its antique furniture was set up to public sale, was hung with faded tapestry, and above its dark and polished summit were hearselike and heavy trappings. Old commodes of rudely carved oak, a discoloured glass in a japan frame, a ponderous arm-chair of Elizabethan fashion, and covered with the same tapestry as the bed, altogether gave that uneasy and sepulchral impression to the mind so commonly produced by the relics of a mouldering and forgotten antiquity. "It looks cheerless, Sir," said the owner, "but then we have not had any regular lodger for years; it is just the same as when Mr. Clarke lived here. But bless you, Sir, he made the dull rooms look gay enough. He was a blithesome gentleman. He and his friends, Mr. Houseman especially, used to make the walls ring again when they were over their cups!" "It might have been better for Mr. Clarke," said the Curate, "had he chosen his comrades with more discretion. Houseman was not a creditable, perhaps not a safe companion." "That was no business of mine then," quoth the lodging-letter; "but it might be now, since I have been a married man!" The Curate smiled, "Perhaps you, Mr. Moor, bore a part in those revels?"