partly a suspicion what it is,--only I can't think that a fellow who is
really gifted with respectable sense, in other directions, should be such
a confounded idiot in this."

Septimius blushed, but held his peace, and the conversation languished
after this; the doctor grimly smoking his pipe, and by no means increasing
the milkiness of his mood by frequent applications to the black bottle,
until Septimius intimated that he would like to go to bed. The old woman
was summoned, and ushered him to his chamber.

At breakfast, the doctor partially renewed the subject which he seemed to
consider most important in yesterday's conversation.

"My young friend," said he, "I advise you to look in cellar and garret, or
wherever you consider the most likely place, for that iron-bound coffer.
There may be nothing in it; it may be full of musty love-letters, or old
sermons, or receipted bills of a hundred years ago; but it may contain
what will be worth to you an estate of five thousand pounds a year. It is
a pity the old woman with the damnable decoction is gone off. Look it up,
I say."

"Well, well," said Septimius, abstractedly, "when I can find time."

So saying, he took his leave, and retraced his way back to his home. He had
not seemed like himself during the time that elapsed since he left it, and
it appeared an infinite space that he had lived through and travelled
over, and he fancied it hardly possible that he could ever get back again.
But now, with every step that he took, he found himself getting miserably
back into the old enchanted land. The mist rose up about him, the pale
mist-bow of ghostly promise curved before him; and he trod back again,