to its side, and backed by a
farther range of monotonous sweeping hills, marked with irregular
lines of grey rock, which, in the distance, bore a rude and colossal
resemblance to the walls of a fortification.

Riding with undiminished speed along a kind of wild horse-track, we
turned the corner of a high and somewhat ruinous wall of loose stones,
and making a sudden wheel we found ourselves in a small quadrangle,
surmounted on two sides by dilapidated stables and kennels, on another
by a broken stone wall, and upon the fourth by the front of the lodge
itself.

The whole character of the place was that of dreary desertion and
decay, which would of itself have predisposed the mind for melancholy
impressions. My guide dismounted, and with respectful attention held
my horse's bridle while I got down; and knocking at the door with the
handle of his whip, it was speedily opened by a neatly-dressed female
domestic, and I was admitted to the interior of the house, and conducted
into a small room, where a fire in some degree dispelled the cheerless
air, which would otherwise have prevailed to a painful degree throughout
the place.

I had been waiting but for a very few minutes when another female
servant, somewhat older than the first, entered the room. She made some
apology on the part of the person whom I had come to visit, for the
slight delay which had already occurred, and requested me further to
wait for a few minutes longer, intimating that the lady's grief was so
violent, that without great effort she could not bring herself to speak
calmly at all. As if to beguile the time, the good dame went on in a
highly communicative strain to tell me, amongst much that could not
interest me, a little of what I had desired to hear. I discovered that
the grief of her whom I had come to visit was excited by the sudden
death of a little boy, her only child, who was then lying dead in his
mother's chamber.

'And the mother's name?' said I, inquiringly.

The woman looked at me for a moment, smiled, and shook her head with
the air of mingled mystery and importance which seems to say, 'I am
unfathomable.' I did not care to press the question, though I suspected
that much of her apparent reluctance was affected, knowing that my
doubts respecting the identity of the person whom I had come to visit
must soon be set at rest, and after a little pause the worthy Abigail
went on as fluently as ever. She told me that her young mistress had