he had to make him so glad. "Glad,"
said Roland, "oh, I know it! Merry dreams, perhaps. What do you think
of a good grave fellow who beckons me on with a brisk smile, and shows
me places, wonderful places, under banks and in woodland pits, where
riches lie piled together? I am sure that some good fortune is
preparing for me, Mark--but you shall share it." Then Mark, seeing in
his words a certain likeness, with a difference, to his own dark
visions, pressed his lips together and sate looking stonily before
him.

At last, one still evening of spring, when the air was intolerably
languid and heavy for mankind, but full of sweet promises for trees
and hidden peeping things, though a lurid redness of secret thunder
had lain all day among the heavy clouds in the plain, the two dined
together. Mark had walked alone that day, and had lain upon the turf
of the down, fighting against a weariness that seemed to be poisoning
the very springs of life within him. But Roland had been brisk and
alert, coming and going upon some secret and busy errand, with a
fragment of a song upon his lips, like a man preparing to set off for
a far country, who is glad to be gone. In the evening, after they had
dined, Roland had let his fancy rove in talk. "If we were rich," he
said, "how we would transform this old place!"

"It is fair enough for me," said Mark heavily; and Roland had chidden
him lightly for his sombre ways, and sketched new plans of life.

Mark, wearied and yet excited, with an intolerable heaviness of
spirit, went early to bed, leaving Roland in the hall. After a short
and broken sleep, he awoke, and lighting a candle, read idly and
gloomily to pass the heavy hours. The house seemed full of strange
noises that night. Once or twice came a scraping and a faint hammering
in the wall; light footsteps seemed to pass in the turret--but the
tower was always full of noises, and Mark heeded them not; at last he
fell asleep again, to be suddenly awakened by a strange and desolate
crying, that came he knew not whence, but seemed to wail upon the air.
The old dog, who slept in Mark's room, heard it too; he was sitting up
in a fearful expectancy. Mark rose in haste, and taking the candle,
went into the passage that led to Roland's room. It was empty, but a
light burned there and showed that the room had not been slept in.
Full of a horrible fear, Mark returned, and went in hot haste up the
turret steps, fear and anxiety struggling together