n a room of his own in the talking way, and what a capital
example he could set to his customers in the drinking department. All
these things passed rapidly through Tom's mind as he sat drinking the
hot punch by the roaring fire, and he felt very justly and properly
indignant that the tall man should be in a fair way of keeping such an
excellent house, while he, Tom Smart, was as far off from it as ever.
So, after deliberating over the two last tumblers, whether he hadn't a
perfect right to pick a quarrel with the tall man for having contrived
to get into the good graces of the buxom widow, Tom Smart at last
arrived at the satisfactory conclusion that he was a very ill-used and
persecuted individual, and had better go to bed.

'Up a wide and ancient staircase the smart girl preceded Tom, shading
the chamber candle with her hand, to protect it from the currents of air
which in such a rambling old place might have found plenty of room to
disport themselves in, without blowing the candle out, but which did
blow it out nevertheless--thus affording Tom's enemies an opportunity of
asserting that it was he, and not the wind, who extinguished the candle,
and that while he pretended to be blowing it alight again, he was in
fact kissing the girl. Be this as it may, another light was obtained,
and Tom was conducted through a maze of rooms, and a labyrinth of
passages, to the apartment which had been prepared for his reception,
where the girl bade him good-night and left him alone.

'It was a good large room with big closets, and a bed which might have
served for a whole boarding-school, to say nothing of a couple of oaken
presses that would have held the baggage of a small army; but what
struck Tom's fancy most was a strange, grim-looking, high backed chair,
carved in the most fantastic manner, with a flowered damask cushion,
and the round knobs at the bottom of the legs carefully tied up in red
cloth, as if it had got the gout in its toes. Of any other queer chair,
Tom would only have thought it was a queer chair, and there would have
been an end of the matter; but there was something about this particular
chair, and yet he couldn't tell what it was, so odd and so unlike any
other piece of furniture he had ever seen, that it seemed to fascinate
him. He sat down before the fire, and stared at the old chair for half
an hour.--Damn the chair, it was such a strange old thing, he couldn't
take his eyes off it.

'"Well," said Tom, sl