re broke upon his ear, at that quiet
hour, such a storm of boisterous sounds--voices so loud with oaths and
altercation--such a calling, clattering, and quarrelling, as he had
never heard the like before. So no wonder that he stepped aside to see
it.

The noise proceeded from a ground-floor window, or rather from three
windows, lighted up, and hung with draperies of crimson and gold: one of
the casements, flaring meretriciously in the modest eye of morn, stood
wide open down to the floor, probably to cool a heated atmosphere; and
when Roger Acton, with a natural curiosity, went on tiptoe, looked in,
and just put aside the curtain for a peep, to know what on earth could
be the matter, he saw a vision of waste and wealth, at which he stood
like one amazed, for a poor man's mind could never have conceived its
equal.

Evidently, he had intruded on the latter end of a long and luxurious
revel. Wax-lights, guttering down in gilded chandeliers, poured their
mellow radiance round in multiplied profusion--for mirrors made them
infinite; crimson and gold were the rich prevailing tints in that wide
and warm banqueting-room; gayly-coloured pictures, set in frames that
Roger fancied massive gold, hung upon the walls at intervals; a
wagon-load of silver was piled upon the sideboard; there blazed in the
burnished grate such a fire as poverty might imagine on a frozen
winter's night, but never can have thawed its blood beside: fruits, and
wines, and costly glass were scattered in prodigal disorder on the
board--just now deserted of its noisy guests, who had crowded round a
certain green table, where cards and heaps of sovereigns appeared to be
mingled in a mass. Roger had never so much as conceived it possible that
there could be wealth like this: it was a fairy-land of Mammon in his
eyes: he stood gasping like a man enchanted; and in the contemplation of
these little hills of gold--in their covetous longing contemplation, he
forgot the noisy quarrel he had turned aside to see, and thirsted for
that rich store earnestly.

In an instant, as he looked (after the comparative lull that must
obviously have succeeded to the clamours he had first heard), the roar
and riot broke out worse than ever. There were the stormy revellers, as
the rabble rout of Comus and his crew, filling that luxurious room with
the sounds of noisy execration and half-drunken strife. Young Sir John,
a free and generous fellow, by far the best among them all, has