over with various post-marks, erasures, and transverse directions, the
scars and furrows of disappointment and adventure.

It had not a good countenance, somehow. The original lines were not
prepossessing. The handwriting I knew as one sometimes knows a face,
without being able to remember who the plague it belongs to; but, still,
with an unpleasant association about it. I examined it carefully, and
laid it down unopened. I went through half-a-dozen others, and recurred
to it, and puzzled over its exterior again, and again postponed what I
fancied would prove a disagreeable discovery; and this happened every now
and again, until I had quite exhausted my budget, and then I did open it,
and looked straight to the signature.

'Pooh! Mark Wylder,' I exclaimed, a good deal relieved.

Mark Wylder! Yes, Master Mark could not hurt _me_. There was nothing
about him to excite the least uneasiness; on the contrary, I believe he
liked me as well as he was capable of liking anybody, and it was now
seven years since we had met.

I have often since thought upon the odd sensation with which I hesitated
over his unopened letter; and now, remembering how the breaking of that
seal resembled, in my life, the breaking open of a portal through which I
entered a labyrinth, or rather a catacomb, where for many days I groped
and stumbled, looking for light, and was, in a manner, lost, hearing
strange sounds, witnessing imperfectly strange sights, and, at last,
arriving at a dreadful chamber--a sad sort of superstition steals over
me.

I had then been his working junior in the cause of Wylder _v._ Trustees