And certainly its first aspect was far from a cheerful one. The cook, now housekeeper, had made ready for him hastily, preparing for him the best bedroom, the room where Mr. Mountford, now distinguished as the old Squire, had lain in state, and the library where he had lived through his life. It was all very chilly when he arrived, a dampness clinging to the unoccupied house, and a white mist in all the hollows of the park. He could not help wondering if it was quite safe, or if the humid chill which met him when he entered was not the very thing to make a solitary inhabitant ill, and end his untimely visit in a fever. They did their very best for him in the house. Large fires were lighted, and the little dinner, which was served in a corner of the dining-room, was as dainty as the means of the place would allow. But it would be difficult to imagine anything more dreary than the first evening. He sat among ghosts, thinking he heard Mr. Mountford’s step, scarcely capable of restraining his imagination: seeing that spare figure seated in his usual chair, or coming in, with a characteristic half-suspicious inspecting look he had, at the door. The few lamps that were in working order were insufficient to light the place. The passages were all black as night, the windows, when he glanced out at them behind the curtains, showing nothing but a universal blackness, not even the sky or the trees. But if the trees were not visible, they were audible, the wind sighing through them, the rain pattering--a wild concert going on in the gloom. And when the rain ceased it was almost worse. Then there came silence, suspicious and ghostly, broken by a sudden dropping now and then from some overcharged evergreen, the beating of a bough against a window, the hoot of the owl in the woods. After he had swallowed his dinner Heathcote got a book, and sat himself down solemnly to read it. But when he had read a page he stopped to listen to the quiet, and it chilled him over again. The sound of footsteps over the stone pavements, the distant clang of a hansom driving up, the occasional voices that passed his window, all the noises of town, would have been delightful to him: but instead here he was at Mount, all alone, with miles of park separating him from any living creature, except the maids and outdoor man who had been left in charge.