In the midst of the town lay the Manor House School where the scholarly
Dr. Bransby, who preached in the Gothic church on Sundays, upon
week-days instructed boys in various branches of polite learning--and
also frequently flogged them. This school was the destination of the
three strangers from America, for here the foundations of young Edgar's
education were to be laid during the several years residence of his
foster-parents in London, in which city the boy himself would pass his
holidays and sometimes be permitted to spend week-ends.

The ample grounds of the school were enclosed from the rest of the town
by a high and thick brick wall, dingy with years, which seemed to frown
like a prison wall upon the grassy and pleasantly shaded freedom
without. At one corner of this ponderous wall was set a more ponderous
gate, riveted and studded with iron bolts, and surmounted with jagged
iron spikes. As the boy passed through it he trembled with delicious awe
which was deepened by the ominous creak of the mighty hinges. He fancied
himself entering upon a domain of mystery and adventure where all manner
of grim and unearthly monsters might cross his pathway to be wrestled
with and destroyed. The path to the house lay through a small parterre
planted with box and other shrubs, and beyond stretched the playgrounds.

As for the house itself, that appeared to the eyes of the boy as a
veritable palace of enchantment. It was a large, grey, rambling
structure of the Elizabethan age. Within, it was like a labyrinth. Edgar
wondered if there were any end to its windings and incomprehensible
divisions and sub-divisions--to its narrow, dusky passages and its steps
down and up--up and down; to its odd and unexpected nooks and corners.
Scarce two rooms seemed to him to be upon the same level and between
continually going down or up three or four steps in a journey through