I will not describe the house of Mortgrange. It seemed to Richard the oldest house he had ever seen, and it moved him strangely. He said to himself the man must be happy who called such a house his own, lived in it, and did what he liked with it. The road they had taken brought them to the back of the Hall, as the people on the estate called the house. The blacksmith went to a side-door, and asked if he and his grandson might have a look at the place: he had heard the baronet was from home! The man said he would see; and returning presently, invited them to walk in. Knowing his grandson's passion, Simon's main thought in taking him was to see him in the library, with its ten thousand volumes: it would be such a joke to watch him pondering, admiring, coveting his own! As soon, therefore, as they were in the great hall, he asked the servant whether they might not see the library. The man left them again, once more to make inquiry. It was a grand old hall where they stood, fitter for the house of a great noble than a mere baronet; but then the family was older than any noble family in the county, and the poor baronetcy, granted to a foolish ancestor, on carpet considerations, by the needy hand of the dominie-king, was no great feather in the cap of the Lestranges. The house itself was older than any baronetcy, for no part of it was later than the time of Elizabeth. It was of fine stone, and of great size. The hall was nearly sixty feet in height, with three windows on one side, and a great one at the end. They were thirty feet from the floor, had round heads, and looked like church-windows. The other side was blank. Mid-height along the end opposite the great window ran a gallery. To the sudden terror of Richard, who stood absorbed in the stateliness of the place, an organ in the gallery burst out playing. He looked up trembling, but could see only the tops of the pipes. As the sounds rolled along the roof, reverberated from the solid walls, and crept about the corners, it seemed to him that the soul of the place was throbbing in his ears the words of a poem centuries old, which he had read a day or two before leaving London:-- “Erthe owte of erthe es wondirly wroghte, Erthe hase getyn one erthe a dignyte of noghte, Erthe appone erthe hase sett alle his thoghte, How that erthe appone erthe may be heghe broghte.” As he listened, his eyes settled upon a suit of armour in position: it became to him a man benighted, lost, forgotten in the cold; the bones were all dusted out of him by the wintry winds; only the shell of him was left. “Mr. Lestrange is in the library, and will see Mr. Armour,” said the voice of the servant. An election was at hand, and at such a time certain persons are more courteous than usual. CHAPTER X. _THE LIBRARY_.