conversation lag, and his host becoming gruffer and less communicative
than he thought quite courteous, retired. But before he went, however,
he could not refrain from making a remark on the gigantic spider, which
was swinging like a pendulum above the Doctor's head.

"What a singular pet!" said he; for the nervous part of him had
latterly been getting uppermost, so that it disturbed him; in fact, the
spider above and the grim man below equally disturbed him. "Are you a
naturalist? Have you noted his habits?"

"Yes," said the Doctor, "I have learned from his web how to weave a
plot, and how to catch my victim and devour him!"

"Thank God," said the Englishman, as he issued forth into the cold gray
night, "I have escaped the grim fellow's web, at all events. How
strange a group,--those two sweet children, that grim old man!"

As regards this matter of the ancient grave, it remains to be recorded,
that, when the snow melted, little Ned and Elsie went to look at the
spot, where, by this time, there was a little hillock with the brown
sods laid duly upon it, which the coming spring would make green. By
the side of it they saw, with more curiosity than repugnance, a few
fragments of crumbly bones, which they plausibly conjectured to have
appertained to some part of the framework of the ancient Colcord,
wherewith he had walked through the troublous life of which his
gravestone spoke. And little Elsie, whose eyes were very sharp, and her
observant qualities of the quickest, found something which Ned at first
pronounced to be only a bit of old iron, incrusted with earth; but
Elsie persisted to knock off some of the earth that seemed to have
incrusted it, and discovered a key. The children ran with their prize