He ceased after a while to take us to see our aunt. Our teachers in various branches were not re-engaged, or were dismissed. Education came to a stand-still. Company was excluded from our house. His own was opened at night to suspicious characters. By bribing one of his servants one dark night, I obtained admission to his courtyard, and discovered, by muffled sounds of music and dancing, that a bacchanalian revelry was going on underground. He sometimes betrayed the next day, in his face and manner, the effect of these midnight orgies. In the mean time my beautiful sisters pined, neglected and sorrowful. Magistus rarely visited them; and when he did, he was guilty of coarse familiarities which shocked and repelled them. I summoned courage, boy as I was, on one of these occasions to reproach him bitterly for these things; for neglecting our education, our dress, our manners, our comforts; and for falling himself into habits which would certainly lead to the ruin of us all. He stared at me insolently, and said that I had better get my father’s friend Caiaphas to revise his guardianship. Like a man who sits helpless in a boat without oars, gliding down a swift current, and hears the far-off but inevitable cataract, I contemplated the dark future that awaited us. I grieved for my sisters more than for myself. We had just been mourning together one day over our sad fate, when Magistus came into the room. He had held a long private interview that morning with a strange man of gigantic size and very coarse manners, whose appearance, as he entered the guest-chamber, excited my gravest suspicions. “You complain so bitterly,” said he, looking reproachfully at me, “of the general decay and ruin into which everything about here, animate and inanimate, is falling, that it is surprising you have not yet intimated your doubts about your father getting his proper supply of provisions.” “Oh no, uncle!” said Mary, tenderly, “you could not forget so sacred a duty as that. Surely no one ever hinted such a thing. The thought of it would drive me mad.” “I wish you to satisfy yourselves perfectly upon that point,” he continued, in the tone of a man who thought himself aggrieved. “A trusty servant is to convey to him a basket of things the day after to-morrow. Let Lazarus accompany him. Let his daughters send some little presents. His son can see him and even speak with him at a distance. He can see his lodging and satisfy himself that he is comfortably situated.” “Without confessing, uncle,” said I, “that this visit is necessary for my faith in your attention to my father, I concede that it will give me very great pleasure.” “How long will he be gone?” said Martha. “Is there no danger?” said Mary. “He will run no risk and will return the same night,” said Magistus, answering both questions in a breath.