special mark of favour should be needed. It simply increased his
discontent. The evening wore on, the supper began; how weary it seemed
to him, that long and jovial supper, with the ale that ran in a
continual stream, the wine that ceaselessly circled round, the jokes,
and bustle, and laughter, the welcome to guests arriving; the cards, and
chess, and games that succeeded it, the drinking, and drinking, and
drinking, till the ladies again left; then drinking yet more freely.

He slipped away at the first opportunity, and having first strolled to
and fro on the bowling green, wet with dew, at the rear of the castle,
asked for his bedroom. It was some time before he could get attended to;
he stood alone at the foot of the staircase while others went first
(their small coins bought them attention), till at last a lamp was
brought to him, and his chamber named. This chamber, such as it was, was
the only pleasure, and that a melancholy one, he had had that day.

Though overflowing with guests, so that the most honoured visitors could
not be accommodated within the castle, and only the ladies could find
sleeping room there, yet the sacred law of honour, the pledge of the
hearth-friend passed three generations ago, secured him this privilege.
The hearth-friend must sleep within, if a king were sent without.
Oliver, of course, would occupy the same room, but he was drinking and
shouting a song below, so that for a while Felix had the chamber to
himself.

It pleased him, because it was the room in which he had always slept
when he visited the place from a boy, when, half afraid and yet
determined to venture, he had first come through the lonely forest
alone. How well he remembered that first time! the autumn sunshine on
the stubble at Old House, and the red and brown leaves of the forest as