Page:Once a Week, Series 1, Volume II Dec 1859 to June 1860.pdf/494

19, 1860.] an early hour, after seeing that all the doors and windows were carefully secured. Carry sat up for a short time after, keeping Parish company, for she did not care to sit alone after dark in that gloomy room up-stairs. At length she too retired, and Parish was left alone. That exemplary female continued for some time her occupation of darning the captain’s socks, till catching herself nodding over her work, she took off her spectacles, and put it away.

“A grewsome, ghostly house this,” she muttered, gently rubbing her elbows, and staring at the fire; “far too big for our little family, and I don’t feel half comfortable in it. Why couldn’t the captain take a cottage in the country? But that was always the way with him—big ideas and ways, and little money to keep them up with. And now his poor wits are going wool-gathering worse and worse every day. As for his chance of getting the Pinchbeck estates, I wouldn’t give tuppence for all the papers he has in his box. A grewsome lonely place, indeed; I declare I’m a'most afraid to go up-stairs to bed.”

She looked round with a shudder. The fire was nearly out; the unsnuffed candle shed a dim and ghostly light through the room; and the night had its own sounds, bred of darkness, such as daylight never heeds—the creaking of a distant door, the trembling of a window beneath the invisible fingers of the wind, the scampering of a mouse behind the wainscoat—all sounds of omen at such an hour—and, near at hand, the loud importunate ticking of the clock in the corner, that seemed to have a demon concealed in its case, who was for ever hammering nails into the coffin of Time. The whole affair was becoming too much for Parish’s nerves, when, looking up for a moment, her glance rested on a row of tiny paper boxes ranged symmetrically on one of the shelves that lined the kitchen. Her face brightened at once; and, rising, she took down one of the boxes, opened it, and extracted therefrom three pills, which, after rolling them tenderly for a few seconds between her palms, she proceeded to