key of that he had managed to purloin from the kitchen where it
hung; nor was there much danger of its absence being discovered,
seeing that in winter no one thought of the garden. The smuggling
of the violin out of the house was the 'dearest danger'--the more so
that he would not run the risk of carrying her out unprotected, and
it was altogether a bulky venture with the case. But by spying and
speeding he managed it, and soon found himself safe within the high
walls of the garden.

It was early spring. There had been a heavy fall of sleet in the
morning, and now the wind blew gustfully about the place. The
neglected trees shook showers upon him as he passed under them,
trampling down the rank growth of the grass-walks. The long twigs
of the wall-trees, which had never been nailed up, or had been torn
down by the snow and the blasts of winter, went trailing away in the
moan of the fitful wind, and swung back as it sunk to a sigh. The
currant and gooseberry bushes, bare and leafless, and 'shivering all
for cold,' neither reminded him of the feasts of the past summer,
nor gave him any hope for the next. He strode careless through it
all to gain the door at the bottom. It yielded to a push, and the
long grass streamed in over the threshold as he entered. He mounted
by a broad stair in the main part of the house, passing the silent
clock in one of its corners, now expiating in motionlessness the
false accusations it had brought against the work-people, and turned
into the chaos of machinery.

I fear that my readers will expect, from the minuteness with which I
recount these particulars, that, after all, I am going to describe a
rendezvous with a lady, or a ghost at least. I will not plead in
excuse that I, too, have been infected with Sandy's mode of