Taking advantage of even this moderate privilege, we are sometimes rewarded with phenomena. Thus, it is little less than a portent to see Captain Walter Lisgard, who is not generally addicted to early rising, up and dressed upon a certain May morning before the clock on the great stairs has sounded three. True, he has been out of bed once or twice at such an hour on other occasions, but then it was because he had not retired to rest the night before. He has done that, however, this time, or, at all events, has exchanged his evening-dress for morning-costume. Some people do get up at the most premature hours, even in winter, and light their own fires, and retrim the midnight lamp to pursue literary or scientific labours; but if Captain Lisgard has got up to study, we will eat him. What _can_ he be about? He gropes his way down the great staircase, where darkness is made visible by streaks of grayish light--which is not yet dawn--struggling through cracks and crannies; and he stumbles over the heavy rug beneath the bottom step, and swears with involuntary emphasis. Then he listens a while, to see what will come of that. The great clock on the hall-table ticks reprovingly: “Don't, don't--shame, shame!” as he never heard it tick before; and hear and there breaks forth an expostulatory creaking, as though from moral furniture, which has no such scruples in the daytime; but his ejaculation has aroused no living being. Softly he turns the key of the frontdoor, softly withdraws the bolts, and would as softly have slipped out, but that there is suddenly a jar and a whir, and the opening door is held fast by an iron hand. “Confound the chain!” exclaims the captain. “It is as difficult to get out of this house as out of Newgate.” Then, when all is still quiet, he emerges upon the stone steps with an “I wonder, for my part, how burglars are ever discovered,” and takes his way towards the village. The gates are locked at the end of the avenue, and the porter and his wife are doubtless fast asleep, as well as fair-haired Polly--dreaming perhaps of himself, thinks the captain with, a half-contemptuous, half-complacent smile--but Master Walter, who is as active as a cat, climbs the stone pillar by help of the iron hinge, and “drops” noiselessly on to the road. He passes up the humble street, where each cottage is quiet as the grave--two blessed hours intervening yet between its inmates and their toil, and makes for the _Lisgard Arms_. The inn stands on a slight elevation, so that he sees it some time before he nears it. “Why, the place is on fire!” mutters the captain; and certainly there is some extraordinary illumination taking place in one of the apartments. A flood of light pours from it as from some Pharos, as though to beckon benighted folks whither good ale is to be found; and yet the house is always shut at eleven, in conformity with the squire's orders.