circumstances--good air, good company, two or three good rules rigidly
adhered to--keep the world out of Bedlam. But, let the world fly into a
passion, and is not Bedlam the safest abode for it?

Sir Austin ascended the stairs, and bent his steps leisurely toward the
chamber where his son was lying in the left wing of the Abbey. At the
end of the gallery which led to it he discovered a dim light. Doubting
it an illusion, Sir Austin accelerated his pace. This wing had aforetime
a bad character. Notwithstanding what years had done to polish it into
fair repute, the Raynham kitchen stuck to tradition, and preserved
certain stories of ghosts seen there, that effectually blackened it in
the susceptible minds of new house-maids and under-crooks, whose fears
would not allow the sinner to wash his sins. Sir Austin had heard of the
tales circulated by his domestics underground. He cherished his own
belief, but discouraged theirs, and it was treason at Raynham to be
caught traducing the left wing. As the baronet advanced, the fact of a
light burning was clear to him. A slight descent brought him into the
passage, and he beheld a poor human candle standing outside his son's
chamber. At the same moment a door closed hastily. He entered Richard's
room. The boy was absent. The bed was unpressed: no clothes about:
nothing to show that he had been there that night. Sir Austin felt
vaguely apprehensive. Has he gone to my room to await me? thought the
father's heart. Something like a tear quivered in his arid eyes as he
meditated and hoped this might be so. His own sleeping-room faced that
of his son. He strode to it with a quick heart. It was empty. Alarm
dislodged anger from his jealous heart, and dread of evil put a thousand
questions to him that were answered in air. After pacing up and down his
room he determined to go and ask the boy Thompson, as he called Ripton,
what was known to him.