e-chamber, mv new friend volunteered his services to see
me to my quarters.

On traversing the lower castle-yard, we mounted an old-fashioned and
rickety stair, which conducted to a gloomy, ill-lighted corridor. I was
too much fatigued, however, to be critical at the moment, and so, having
thanked O'Grady for all his kindness, I threw off my clothes hastily,
and, before my head was well upon the pillow, was sound asleep.

CHAPTER IV. THE BREAKFAST

There are few persons so unreflective as not to give way to a little
self-examination on waking for the first time in a strange place. The
very objects about are so many appeals to your ingenuity or to your
memory, that you cannot fail asking yourself how you became acquainted
with them: the present is thus made the herald of the past, and it is
difficult, when unravelling the tangled web of doubt that assails you,
not to think over the path by which you have been travelling.

As for me, scarcely were my eyes opened to the light, I had barely
thrown one glance around my cold and comfortless chamber, when thoughts
of home came rushing to my mind. The warm earnestness of my father, the
timid dreads of my poor mother, rose up before me, as I felt myself, for
the first time, alone in the world. The elevating sense of heroism, that
more or less blends with every young man's dreams of life, gilds our
first journey from our father's roof. There is a feeling of freedom in
being the arbiter of one's actions, to go where you will and when you
will. Till that moment the world has been a comparative blank; the
trammels of school or the ties of tutorship have bound and
restrained you. You have been living, as it were, within the rules
of court--certain petty privileges permitted, certain small liberties
allowed; but now you come forth disenchanted, disenthralled,
emancipated, free to come as to go--a man in all the plenitude of his
volition; and, better still, a man without the heavy, depressing weight
of responsibility that makes manhood less a blessing than a burden. The
first burst of life is indeed a glorious thing; youth, health, hope, and
confidence have each a force and vigour they lose in after years:
life is then a splendid river, and we are swimming with the stream--no
adverse waves to weary, no billows to buffet us, we hold on our course
rejoicing.

The sun was peering between the curtains of my window, and playing
in fitful flashes on the old oak floor, as I lay thu