Although the drizzle was excluded by roof and walls from the house, the moisture-charged atmosphere could not be shut out, and it made the interior only less wretched than outside the house. The banisters, the jambs of the door, the iron locks were bedewed, and the hand that touched them left a smear and came off clogged with water. The slates of the floor turned black, and stood with drops, as though the rain had splashed over them. Wherever there was a stone in the wall of a slatey or impervious nature, it declared itself by condensing moisture, sweating through plaster and whitewash, and sending tears trickling down the walls. The fireirons became suddenly tarnished and rusty. The salt in the cellar and salt-box was sodden, and dripped brine upon the floor, as did the hams and sides of bacon hung up in the kitchen. The table-linen and that for the beds adhered to the fingers when touched. Anthony stood at the window in the hall looking out, then he went to the fire; then took down a gun from over the mantel-shelf, and looked at the lock and barrel; stood it in the corner of the fire, and resolved by and by to clean it. Then he went to the window again, and wrote his initials on the window-pane, or tried to do so, and failed, for the condensation of moisture was not inside but without, on the glass. He had nothing to occupy him; no work could be done on the farm, and employment or amusement lacked in the house. Where was Urith? She might come and talk to and entertain him. What is the good of a wife, unless she sets herself to make home agreeable to her husband, when he is unable to go out-of-doors? Where was Solomon Gibbs? He might have talked, fiddled, and sung, though, indeed, Anthony had no relish just then for music, and he knew pretty well all the topics on which Uncle Sol had aught to say. His anecdotes had often been retailed, and Anthony loathed them. He knew when Sol was preparing to tell one, he knew which he was about to produce, he was acquainted with every word he would use in telling his tale. Anthony had grown irritable of late with Sol, and had brushed him rudely when he began to repeat some hacknied anecdote. On such a day as this, however, even Uncle Sol were better than no one. At length, Anthony, impatient and out of humour, went upstairs and called Urith. She answered him faintly from a distance. "Where are you hidden? What are you about?" he called. "In the lumber-room," she replied. He followed the direction of her voice, and came to a sort of garret full of every kind of discarded article of domestic use, old crocks that had lost a leg, broken-backed chairs, a dismantled clock, corroded rushlights, bottles that were cracked, a chest of drawers which had lost half the brass handles by which the drawers could be pulled out. In the obscurity, dishevelled, covered with dust, and warm with her exertions, stood Urith. She put her hand to her face, and pushed her strayed hair from her eyes.