contented,--this pervading temper of the Doctor. Crusty Hannah knew it
in the kitchen: even those who passed the house must have known it
somehow or other, and have felt a chill, an irritation, an influence on
the nerves, as they passed. The spiders knew it, and acted as they were
wont to do in stormy weather. The schoolmaster, when he returned from
his walk, seemed likewise to know it, and made himself secure and
secret, keeping in his own room, except at dinner, when he ate his rice
in silence, without looking towards the Doctor, and appeared before him
no more till evening, when the grim Doctor summoned him into the study,
after sending the two children to bed.

"Sir," began the Doctor, "you have spoken of some old documents in your
possession relating to the English descent of your ancestors. I have a
curiosity to see these documents. Where are they?" [Endnote: 4.]

"I have them about my person," said the schoolmaster; and he produced
from his pocket a bundle of old yellow papers done up in a parchment
cover, tied with a piece of white cord, and presented them to Doctor
Grimshawe, who looked over them with interest. They seemed to consist
of letters, genealogical lists, certified copies of entries in
registers, things which must have been made out by somebody who knew
more of business than this ethereal person in whose possession they now
were. The Doctor looked at them with considerable attention, and at
last did them hastily up in the bundle again, and returned them to the
owner.

"Have you any idea what is now the condition of the family to whom
these papers refer?" asked he.

"None whatever,--none for almost a hundred years," said the