closure, was every night perambulated by two or three Pyrenees dogs--a
faithful race, which had been perpetuated in the house during a century
and a half. Such was the habitation destined for the meeting of the
descendants of the family of Rennepont. The night which separated the
12th from the 13th day of February was near its close. A calm had
succeeded the storm, and the rain had ceased; the sky was clear and full
of stars; the moon, on its decline, shone with a mild lustre, and threw a
melancholy light over that deserted, silent house, whose threshold for so
many years no human footstep had crossed.

A bright gleam of light, issuing from one of the windows of the
guardian's dwelling, announced that Samuel was awake. Figure to yourself
a tolerably large room, lined from top to bottom with old walnut
wainscoting browned to an almost black, with age. Two half-extinguished
brands are smoking amid the cinders on the hearth. On the stone
mantelpiece, painted to resemble gray granite, stands an old iron
candlestick, furnished with a meagre candle, capped by an extinguisher.
Near it one sees a pair of double-barrelled pistols, and a sharp cutlass,
with a hilt of carved bronze, belonging to the seventeenth century.
Moreover, a heavy rifle rests against one of the chimney jambs. Four
stools, an old oak press, and a square table with twisted legs, formed
the sole furniture of this apartment. Against the wall were
systematically suspended a number of keys of different sizes, the shape
of which bore evidence to their antiquity, whilst to their rings were
affixed divers labels. The back of the old press, which moved by a secret
spring, had been pushed aside, and discovered, built in the wall, a large
and deep iron chest, the lid of which, being open, displayed the wondrous
mechanism of one of those Florentine locks of the sixteenth century,
which, better than any modern invention, set all picklocks at defiance;
and, moreover, according to the notions of that age, are supplied with a
thick lining of asbestos cloth, suspended by gold wire at a distance from
the sides of the chest, for the purpose of rendering incombustible the
articles contained in it. A large cedar-wood box had been taken from the
chest, and placed upon a stool; it contained numerous papers, carefully
arranged and docketed. By the light of a brass lamp, the old keeper
Samuel, was writing in a small register, whilst Bathsheba, his wife, was
dictating to him from an a