words; and I think that circumstance determined me to accept the invitation: I felt interested in a man who seemed more exaggeratedly reserved than myself.
When he saw my horse's breast fairly pushing the barrier, he did pull out his hand to unchain it, and then sullenly preceded me up the causeway, calling, as we entered the court:
"Joseph, take Mr. Lockwood's horse; and bring up some wine."
"Here we have the whole establishment of domestics, I suppose," was the reflection, suggested by this compound order, "No wonder the grass grows up between the flags, and cattle are the only hedge-cutters."
Joseph was an elderly, nay, an old man, very old, perhaps, though hale and sinewy.
"The Lord help us!" he soliloquised in an undertone of peevish displeasure, while relieving me of my horse: looking, meantime, in my face so sourly that I charitably conjectured he must have need of divine aid to digest his din-
