The library was the first room we entered, which, even in the palmiest days of Fairburn Hall had been a dreary room, because the least in use. Except Marmaduke himself, no one ever sat there; the wicked books, which were the only sort read and patronized by Sir Massingberd, were all in the Squire's private sitting-room, and the gaps in the shelves that lined the present apartment, revealed that the Heaths had laid in a considerable stock of them. Old Sir Wentworth, a miser in his old age, had been a dunce in his youth, and was once heard openly to regret that circumstance from the fact, that he was unable to peruse the loose continental literature which his ancestors had provided for his delectation, free of expense. In the rare cases when the Oak Parlour had not sufficient accommodation for the guests of the missing Squire, they had been wont to adjourn to the present apartment, to smoke and lounge through half the night; but it bore no trace of having been so used. Every chair and sofa were in their appointed place, as though they had grown up like trees through the dusty carpet. Upon the tables and mantelpieces, the dust had settled inches thick. The grate was laid ready for lighting; but over the coals and sticks hung a sort of mildew, that looked as if it would have defied a pine-torch to set light to it. These things we remarked gradually, one by one, for the butler had only opened the shutters of one window, and the extent of the apartment was prodigious. The shelves were filled almost entirely with quartos--books were not hand-books in those days--rich with plates, and "meadows of margin;" you could not have sent a child on an errand to bring one of them; if he had managed to extricate a tome at all by painfully loosening it at head and foot, it might have fallen out and brained him. A fourth of the entire stock was composed of books of Catholic theology. "Those," observed Mr. Long, "are the most valuable things in the library. Sir Nicholas is supposed to have won his bride by paying that costly tribute to her faith. The illuminations are most rare and splendid. Why, what is this, Gilmore? I can't get this volume down. It seems stuck to the others." The butler grinned maliciously. "I think you will find them all like that, sir. There's nothing but the wood-backs left. The Squire disposed of these books soon after Mr. Marmaduke left, and got this imitation stuff put up instead." Mr. Long broke out into wrathful indignation, but the young heir kept silence, only smiling bitterly. "Perhaps he was afraid that their heterodoxy might do his nephew harm," remarked I, rather tickled, I confess, by this characteristic fraud. "No, sir," replied Gilmore, drily; "he merely observed, that, being theological works, there was as much in them now as before." "Impious wretch!" exclaimed the Rector. "See, he has bartered the Fathers of the Church for a set of empty backgammon boards, and lettered them with their venerable names."