agitating vision of the days gone by,
came over the horseman's mind. He pulled in his rein, clasped his hands
together, and gazed around with a look of sad and painful recognition.
At the end of a minute or two, however, he recovered himself, rode on to
the front of the house we have mentioned, and dismounting from his
horse, pulled the bell-rope which action was instantly followed by a
long peal heard from within.
"It sounds cold and empty," said the wayfarer to himself, "like my
reception, and perhaps my hopes."
No answer was made for some time; and though the sounds had been loud
enough, as the traveller's ears bore witness, yet they required to be
repeated before any one came to ask his pleasure.
"This is very strange!" he said, as he applied his hand to the bell-rope
again. "He must have grown miserly, as they say, indeed. Why I remember
a dozen servants crowding into this porch at the first sound of a
horse's feet."
A short time after, some steps were heard within; bolts and bars were
carefully withdrawn, and an old man in a white jacket, with a lantern in
his hand, opened the heavy oaken door, and gazed upon the stranger.
"Where is the Earl of Byerdale?" demanded the horseman, in apparent
surprise. "Is he not at home?"
The old man gazed at him for a moment from head to foot, without
replying, and then answered slowly and somewhat bitterly, "Yes, he is at
home--at his long home, from which he'll never move again! Why, he has
been dead and buried this fortnight."
"Indeed!" cried the traveller, putting his hand to his head, with an air
of surprise, and what we may call dismay; "indeed! and who has
discharged the servants and shut up the house?"
"Those who have a right to do it," replied the old man, sharply; "for my
lord was not such a fool as to leave his property to be spent, and his
place mismanaged, by two scape-graces whom he knew well enough."
As he spoke, without farther ceremony he shut the door in the stranger's
face, and then returned to his own abode in the back part of the house,
chuckling as he went, and murmuring to himself, "I think I have paid him
now for throwing me into the horsepond, for just telling a little bit of
a lie about Ellen, the laundry maid. He thought I had forgotten him! Ha!
ha! ha!"
The traveller stood confounded; but he made no observation, he uttered
no word, he seemed too much accustomed to meet the announcement of fresh
misfortune to suffer it to drive him from the strong-hold of silence.
Sweeter or gentl