Mind, I tell you, it won't be no use."

"What do you mean?"

"You look at this place, sir--it's more like a prison than a house,
isn't it? You, look at us as lives in it. We've got (saving your
presence) a foot apiece in our graves, haven't we? When you was young
yourself, sir, what would you have done if they had shut you up for six
weeks in such a place as this, among your grandfathers and grandmothers,
with their feet in the grave?"

"I really can't say."

"I can, sir. You'd have run away. _She'll_ run away. Don't you worry
your head about her--she'll save you the trouble. I tell you again,
she'll run away."

With those ominous words the housekeeper took up her basket, sighed
heavily, and left me.

I sat down under a tree quite helpless. Here was the whole
responsibility shifted upon my miserable shoulders. Not a lady in the
neighborhood to whom I could apply for assistance, and the nearest shop
eight miles distant from us. The toughest case I ever had to conduct,
when I was at the Bar, was plain sailing compared with the difficulty of
receiving our fair guest.

It was absolutely necessary, however, to decide at once where she was to
sleep. All the rooms in the tower were of stone--dark, gloomy, and cold
even in the summer-time. Impossible to put her in any one of them. The
only other alternative was to lodge her in the little modern lean-to,
which I have already described as being tacked on to the side of the
old building. It contained three cottage-rooms, and they might be made
barely habitable for a young lady. But then those rooms were occupied
by Morgan. His books were in one, his bed was in another, his pipes and
general lumber were in the third. Could I expect him, after the sour
similitudes he had used in reference to our expected visitor, to turn
out of his habitation and disarrange all his habits for her convenience?
The bare idea of proposing the thing to him seemed ridiculous; and
yet inexorable necessity left me no choice but to make the hopeless
experiment. I walked back to the tower hastily and desperately, to face
the worst that might happen before my courage cooled altogether.

On crossing the threshold of the hall door I was stopped, to my great
amazement, by a procession of three of the farm-servants, followed by
Morgan, all walking after each other, in Indian file, toward the spiral
staircase that led to the top of the tower. The first of the servants
carried the materials for making a