continued empty.

"I'll take another look at the old place," I said, one day in August as
I was passing the lodge, and rode at a quiet contemplative walk down the
avenue. I hung my rein over one of the rails of the porch steps, and
passed round into the garden. Not a flower to be seen; but the place of
them famously supplied with potatoes and other useful articles--and the
same evidence of absenteeism in the shape of tottering walls, and grass
grown walks, and dusty fountains in all directions. What a shame!--if I
knew the boy's address, I would write to him to come home at once; but
that Leicestershire guardian has kept him quite separated from those who
ought to have been his friends, and had the bringing up of him from his
youth. If we are to have him all the rest of his life, he could not have
come among us too early; and in the firm intention of carrying this
resolution into effect, I determined to look out for some workman about
the place, to ask where Mr Edwards was to be found. The man that has the
care of the garden can't be far off;--and accordingly I went in search
of him. But either the vegetables were illustrations, like Southey's
butlers, of self-culture, or the gardener had gone to dinner; and in the
expectation of finding him in the kitchen, I clambered into the house by
an open window, and walked quietly along the passage. I thought I heard
voices in the garden library, a delightful room on the ground-floor,
where I had passed many an evening with old Frank; and, supposing the
gardener had taken possession of it, I opened the door. Close to the
window two persons were sitting, so deeply engaged in conversation that
they did not remark my entrance, and I took the opportunity of observing
them at leisure. They were both young men--both tall and good-looking;
one remarkably dark, with great umbrageous whiskers and mustaches; the
other a chestnut-haired, fresh-complexioned youth, so like poor old
Frank in the set on of his head and breadth of his shoulders, that I