At length, however, he took up the papers on which the other had commented, and, without noticing the observations that he had written, said it was unjust, upon a case where there was nothing made out against him but suspicion, that he should be detained as a close prisoner. "If, therefore," he said, "you will give me your word not to attempt to make your escape, the doors shall be thrown open to you; this chamber and the next shall be your abode for the time, though they should have put you somewhere else, for this room is appropriated to me. Here," he continued, in a thoughtful and abstracted tone, "when I wish to think over all the crowded acts of a long, eventful, and constantly changing life, I come and sit, where no sound interrupts me but the twittering of the swallow, as it skims past my windows. Here I can people the air with the things, and beings, and deeds of the past, without the empty crowd of the insignificant living breaking in upon my solitude, and sweeping away the thinner but more thrilling creations called up by memory. I know not how it is, young gentleman, that there is scarcely any one but you whom I could have borne patiently to see in this chamber; but your countenance seems connected with those days to which this room is dedicated. There is a resemblance, a strong and touching resemblance, to several persons long dead; and that likeness calls up again to my mind many a vision of my youthful days--days, between which and the dark present, lies a gulf of fiery passions, sorrows, and regrets. I know not wherefore they put you here, or who dared to do it, but it is strange that, being here, you seem to my eyes the only fit tenant of this chamber except myself. Here I sit and read the letters of dead friends--here I sit and ponder over the affections and the hatreds, the hopes, the fears, the wrath, the enjoyment, the sorrow, the remorse of the past; here often do I sit and gaze upon the pictures of those I loved in former times--of the dead, and the changed, and the alienated; of persons who, when those pictures were painted, never thought that there could come a change upon them, or upon me, either in the bodily or the mental frame; never dreamed of the mattock, and the grave, and the coffin, and the slow curling worm that has long since revelled in their hearts; no, nor of fierce and fiery contention, envy, jealousy, rivalry, hatred, the death of bright affection, and the burial of every warm and once living hope. Here am I still wont to gaze upon their pictures, and I know not how it is, but it seems to me as if your face were amongst them."