deep shadow it threw on the ancient and dishonored hearthstone. To
escape the ghastly memories it evoked and also to satisfy myself
that the room was really as empty as it seemed, I took another step
forward. This caused the light from the lantern I carried to spread
beyond the point on which it had hitherto been so effectively
concentrated; but the result was to emphasize rather than detract
from the extreme desolation of the great room. The settle was a
fixture, as I afterwards found, and was almost the only article of
furniture to be seen on the wide expanse of uncarpeted floor. There
was a table or two in hiding somewhere amid the shadows at the other
end from where I stood, and possibly some kind of stool or settee;
but the general impression made upon me was that of a completely
dismantled place given over to moth and rust.

I do not include the walls. They were not bare like the floor, but
covered with books from floor to ceiling. These books were not the
books of to-day; they had stood so long in their places unnoted and
untouched, that they had acquired the color of fungus, and smelt -
Well, there is no use adding to the picture. Every one knows the
spirit of sickening desolation pervading rooms which have been shut
up for an indefinite length of time from air and sunshine.

The elegance of the heavily stuccoed ceiling, admitted to be one of
the finest specimens of its kind in Washington, as well as the
richness of the carvings ornamenting the mantel of Italian marble
rising above the accursed hearthstone, only served to make more
evident the extreme neglect into which the rest of the room had sunk.
Being anything but anxious to subject myself further to its unhappy
influence and quite convinced that the place was indeed as empty as
it looked, I turned to leave, when my eyes fell upon something so