shyness or pride banished the wealthier traders. The garden gates stood
wide open, as they had stood on the winter night on which I had passed
through them to the chamber of death. The remembrance of that deathbed
came vividly before me, and the dying man's fantastic threat rang again in
my startled ears. An irresistible impulse, which I could not then account
for, and which I cannot account for now,--an impulse the reverse of that
which usually makes us turn away with quickened step from a spot that
recalls associations of pain,--urged me on through the open gates up the
neglected grass-grown road, urged me to look, under the weltering sun of
the joyous spring, at that house which I bad never seen but in the gloom
of a winter night, under the melancholy moon. As the building came in
sight, with dark-red bricks, partially overgrown with ivy, I perceived
that it was no longer unoccupied. I saw forms passing athwart the open
windows; a van laden with articles of furniture stood before the door; a
servant in livery was beside it giving directions to the men who were
unloading. Evidently some family was just entering into possession. I
felt somewhat ashamed of my trespass, and turned round quickly to retrace
my steps. I had retreated but a few yards, when I saw before me, at
the entrance gates, Mr. Vigors, walking beside a lady apparently of middle
age; while, just at hand, a path cut through the shrubs gave view of a
small wicketgate at the end of the grounds. I felt unwilling not only to
meet the lady, whom I guessed to be the new occupier, and to whom I should
have to make a somewhat awkward apology for intrusion, but still more to
encounter the scornful look of Mr. Vigors in what appeared to my pride a
false or undignified position. Involuntarily, therefore, I turned down
the path which would favour my escape unobserved. When about half way
between the house and the wicket-gate, the shrubs that had clothed the
path on either side suddenly opened to the left, bringing into view a
circle of sward, surrounded by irregular fragments of old brickwork
partially covered with ferns, creepers, or rockplants, weeds, or wild