As he drove towards the house, he had that natural feeling of anxiety which is apt to arise after absence from any scene in which the traveller is deeply interested—a vague dread, a lurking fear that although, according to human foresight, all should have gone well, yet some unforeseen calamity, some misfortune unprovided against, may have arisen in the interval. The night was cloudy and starless, cold too. The wind, which had been rising all day, now blew a gale, and all the dust of the day’s traffic was blown into the traveller’s face as he drove along the broad and busy highway. That north-east wind shrieked shrilly over the housetops of the Shadrack district, and one might prophesy the fall of many a loose slate and the destruction of many a flowerpot, hurled untimely from narrow window-sills, ere the hurricane exhausted its fury. The leaden cowls that surmounted refractory chimneys spun wildly round before the breeze, and in some spots, where tall shafts clustered thickly and cowls were numerous, seemed in their vehement gyrations to be holding a witch’s Sabbath in honour of the storm. That north-easter had a biting breath, and chilled the blood of the Shadrackites till they were moved to dismal prophecies of a hard winter. ‘We allus gets a hard winter when the heckwinockshalls begins hearly,’ says one gentleman in the coal-and-potato line to another. And the north-easter howls its dreary dirge, as if it said, ‘Cry aloud and lament for the summer that is for ever gone, for southern breezes and sunny days that return no more.’ Cedar House looked more than usually darksome after the brighter skies and gayer colours of a French city. Those dust and smoke laden old trees, lank poplars, which swayed and rocked in the gale, that gloomy wall, those blank-looking windows above it, inspired no cheering thoughts. There was no outward sign to denote that any one lay dead in the house; but it seemed no fitting abode for the living. As the hansom came aground against the curbstone in front of the tall iron gate, Lucius was surprised to see a stout female with a bundle ring the bell. She clutched her bundle with one hand, and carried a market-basket on the other arm, and that process of ringing the bell was not performed without some slight difficulty. Lucius jumped out of the cab and confronted the stout female. ‘Mrs. Milderson!’ he exclaimed, surprised, as the woman grasped her burdens and struggled against the wind, which blew her scanty gown round her stout legs, and tore her shawl from her shoulders, and mercilessly buffeted her bonnet.