of his malady. It was the manner in which all this, and much
more, was said--it was the apparent heart that went with his
request--which allowed me no room for hesitation; and I
accordingly obeyed forthwith what I still considered a very
singular summons.

Although, as boys, we had been even intimate associates, yet
I really knew little of my friend. His reserve had been always
excessive and habitual. I was aware, however, that his very
ancient family had been noted, time out of mind, for a peculiar
sensibility of temperament, displaying itself, through long ages,
in many works of exalted art, and manifested, of late, in
repeated deeds of munificent yet unobtrusive charity, as well as
in a passionate devotion to the intricacies, perhaps even more
than to the orthodox and easily recognisable beauties of musical
science. I had learned, too, the very remarkable fact, that the
stem of the Usher race, all time-honoured as it was, had put
forth, at no period, any enduring branch; in other words, that
the entire family lay in the direct line of descent, and had
always, with very trifling and very temporary variation, so lain.
It was this deficiency, I considered, while running over in
thought the perfect keeping of the character of the premises with
the accredited character of the people, and while speculating
upon the possible influence which the one, in the long
lapse of centuries, might have exercised upon the other--it was
this deficiency, perhaps, of collateral issue, and the consequent
undeviating transmission, from sire to son, of the patrimony with
the name, which had, at length, so identified the two as to merge
the original title of the estate in the quaint and equivocal
appellation of the "House of Usher"--an appellation which seemed