ving Sir Austin in his study. Long hours the baronet sat alone. The
house had not its usual influx of Feverels that day. Austin Wentworth
was staying at Poer Hall, and had only come over for an hour. At
midnight the house breathed sleep. Sir Austin put on his cloak and cap,
and took the lamp to make his rounds. He apprehended nothing special,
but with a mind never at rest he constituted himself the sentinel of
Raynham. He passed the chamber where the Great-Aunt Grantley lay, who
was to swell Richard's fortune, and so perform her chief business on
earth. By her door he murmured, "Good creature! you sleep with a sense
of duty done," and paced on, reflecting, "She has not made money a demon
of discord," and blessed her. He had his thoughts at Hippias's somnolent
door, and to them the world might have subscribed.

A monomaniac at large, watching over sane people in slumber! thinks
Adrian Harley, as he hears Sir Austin's footfall, and truly that was
a strange object to see.--Where is the fortress that has not one weak
gate? where the man who is sound at each particular angle? Ay, meditates
the recumbent cynic, more or less mad is not every mother's son?
Favourable circumstances--good air, good company, two or three good
rules rigidly adhered to--keep the world out of Bedlam. But, let the
world fly into a passion, and is not Bedlam the safest abode for it?

Sir Austin ascended the stairs, and bent his steps leisurely toward the
chamber where his son was lying in the left wing of the Abbey. At the
end of the gallery which led to it he discovered a dim light. Doubting
it an illusion, Sir Austin accelerated his pace. This wing had aforetime
a bad character. Notwithstanding what years had done to polish it into
fair repute, the Raynham kitchen stuck to tradition, and preserved
certain stories of ghosts seen there, that effectually blackened it in
the susceptible minds of new house-maids and under-crooks, whose fears
would not allow the sinner to wash his sins. Sir Austin had heard of
the tales circulated by his domestics underground. He cherished his
own belief, but discouraged theirs, and it was treason at Raynham to be
caught traducing the left wing. As the baronet advanced, the fact of a
light burning was clear to him. A slight descent brought him into the
passage, and he beheld a poor human candle standing outside his son's
chamber. At the same moment a door closed hastily. He entered Richard's
room. The boy was absent. The b