street. Here he drew a long breath and
looked around him; then he began wandering restlessly through the
rooms, of which there were five or six on the ground-floor. The
furniture, the carpets, and all the sordid fixtures of the house were
just as Richard had known them in his childhood. Everything was
unchanged, even to the faded peacock-feather stuck over the parlor
looking-glass. As he regarded the familiar objects and breathed the
snuffy atmosphere peculiar to the place, the past rose so vividly
before him that he would scarcely have been startled if a lean, gray
old man had suddenly appeared in one of the doorways. On a peg in the
front hall hung his cousin's napless beaver hat, satirically ready to
be put on; in the kitchen closet a pair of ancient shoes, worn down
at the heel and with taps on the toe, had all the air of intending to
step forth. The shoes had been carefully blacked, but a thin skin of
mould had gathered over them. They looked like Lemuel Shackford. They
had taken a position habitual with him. Richard was struck by the
subtile irony which lay in these inanimate things. That a man's hat
should outlast the man, and have a jaunty expression of triumph! That
a dead man's shoes should mimic him!

The tall eight-day clock on the landing had run down. It had
stopped at twelve, and it now stood with solemnly uplifted finger, as
if imposing silence on those small, unconsidered noises which
commonly creep out, like mice, only at midnight. The house was full
of such stealthy sounds. The stairs creaked at intervals,
mysteriously, as if under the weight of some heavy person ascending.
Now and then the woodwork stretched itself with a snap, as though it
had grown stiff in the joints with remaining so long in one position.
At times there were muffled reverberations of footfalls on the
flooring overhead. Richard had a curious consciousness of not being
alone, but of moving in the midst of an invisible throng of persons
who elbowed him softly and breathed in his face, and vaguely
impressed themselves upon him as being former occupants of the
premises. This populous solitude, this silence with its busy
interruptions, grew insupportable as he passed from room to room.

One chamber he did not enter,--the chamber in which his cousin's
body was found that Wednesday morning. In Richard's imagination it
was still lying there, white and piteous, by the hearth. He paused at
the threshold and glanced in; then turned abrupt