ribbon, and had a tarnished copper key moored above it, to show
where it was sunk. His head was awry, and he had a one-sided,
crab-like way with him, as if his foundations had yielded at about
the same time as those of the house, and he ought to have been
propped up in a similar manner.

'How weak am I,' said Arthur Clennam, when he was gone, 'that I
could shed tears at this reception! I, who have never experienced
anything else; who have never expected anything else.' He not only
could, but did. It was the momentary yielding of a nature that had
been disappointed from the dawn of its perceptions, but had not
quite given up all its hopeful yearnings yet. He subdued it, took
up the candle, and examined the room. The old articles of
furniture were in their old places; the Plagues of Egypt, much the
dimmer for the fly and smoke plagues of London, were framed and
glazed upon the walls. There was the old cellaret with nothing in
it, lined with lead, like a sort of coffin in compartments; there
was the old dark closet, also with nothing in it, of which he had
been many a time the sole contents, in days of punishment, when he
had regarded it as the veritable entrance to that bourne to which
the tract had found him galloping. There was the large, hard-
featured clock on the sideboard, which he used to see bending its
figured brows upon him with a savage joy when he was behind-hand
with his lessons, and which, when it was wound up once a week with
an iron handle, used to sound as if it were growling in ferocious
anticipation of the miseries into which it would bring him. But
here was the old man come back, saying, 'Arthur, I'll go before and
light you.'

Arthur followed him up the staircase, which was panelled off into