et even this was not all unmixed with something of melancholy, for
the contrast of the gay sunbeams and bright flowers only rendered the
gloom more apparent, and like a convent-garden, seemed to awaken
cravings after the joyous world without, diminishing nothing of the
sorrow and monotony within.

But I was not in those days much given to moralizing, or to the
investigation of my own inward feelings.

I had come thither to inquire, to see, to learn, to find out
things--not causes. And perceiving at one glance that my first
impression was correct, that the grass-plots were recently mown, the
gravel-walks newly rolled, and spotless of weeds, the tall yew hedges
assiduously clipped into the straightest and most formal lines; that
every thing, in short, displayed the most heedful tendance, the
neatest cultivation, with the exception of the summer-pavilion, which
evidently was devoted to decay, I became but the more satisfied that
there was some mystery, and the more resolute to probe it to the core.

It was quite clear that when that garden was laid out, and that avenue
planted, how many years ago the giant size of the old elms denoted,
the summer-house was the meaning of the whole design. The avenue had
no object but to lead to it, the little lawn no purpose but to receive
it. Doubly strange, therefore, did it seem that these should be kept
up in all their trimness, that suffered to fall into decay.

It was the tragedy of Hamlet, with Hamlet's part omitted!

I stood for a little while wondering, and half overcome by a sort of
indescribable fanciful superstition. A cloud had come over the sun,
the nightingales had ceased to sing, and there was not a sound of any
kind to be heard, except the melancholy murmur of the summer air in
the tree-tops.

In a moment, however, the transitory spell was shaken off, and, once
more the bold and reckless schoolboy, I turned to the performance of
my self-imposed task.

The summer-house, as I have said, was octagon, three of its sides,
with a window in each, jutting out into the clear pool, and three,
with a door in the centre, and a window on each side, fronting the
little lawn. But, alas! the windows were all secured with jalousies,
strongly bolted and barred from within, and the door was secured by a
lock, the key of which was absent.

A short examination showed, however, that the door was held by no
bolts at the top or bottom; and the rusty condition of both lock and
hinges ren