Mr. Gerningham, his valet, assisted him, and gave him his drops; and the
Judge told him to wait in his bedroom till he should go to sleep.

Three persons that night had specially odd stories to tell.

The housekeeper had got rid of the trouble of amusing her little girl at
this anxious time, by giving her leave to run about the sitting-rooms
and look at the pictures and china, on the usual condition of touching
nothing. It was not until the last gleam of sunset had for some time
faded, and the twilight had so deepened that she could no longer discern
the colours on the china figures on the chimneypiece or in the cabinets,
that the child returned to the housekeeper's room to find her mother.

To her she related, after some prattle about the china, and the
pictures, and the Judge's two grand wigs in the dressing-room off the
library, an adventure of an extraordinary kind.

In the hall was placed, as was customary in those times, the sedan-chair
which the master of the house occasionally used, covered with stamped
leather, and studded with gilt nails, and with its red silk blinds down.
In this case, the doors of this old-fashioned conveyance were locked,
the windows up, and, as I said, the blinds down, but not so closely that
the curious child could not peep underneath one of them, and see into
the interior.

A parting beam from the setting sun, admitted through the window of a
back room, shot obliquely through the open door, and lighting on the
chair, shone with a dull transparency through the crimson blind.