visions of heaven, and clothing tree and fell, brake and hillock, with
the lavish hues of infant summer,--the sun itself only made more
desolate, because more conspicuous, the venerable fabric, which the
youthful traveller frequently paused more accurately to survey, and
its laughing and sportive beams playing over chink and crevice, seemed
almost as insolent and untimeous as the mirth of the young mocking the
silent grief of some gray-headed and solitary mourner.

Clarence had now reached the porch, and the sound of the shrill bell
he touched rang with a strange note through the general stillness of
the place. A single servant appeared, and ushered Clarence through a
screen hall, hung round with relics of armour, and ornamented on the
side opposite the music gallery with a solitary picture of gigantic
size, and exhibiting the full length of the gaunt person and sable
steed of that Sir Piers de Mordaunt who had so signalized himself in
the field in which Henry of Richmond changed his coronet for a crown.
Through this hall Clarence was led to a small chamber clothed with
uncouth and tattered arras, in which, seemingly immersed in papers, he
found the owner of the domain.

"Your studies," said Linden, after the salutations of the day, "seem
to harmonize with the venerable antiquity of your home;" and he
pointed to the crabbed characters and faded ink of the papers on the
table.

"So they ought," answered Mordaunt, with a faint smile; "for they are
called from their quiet archives in order to support my struggle for
that home. But I fear the struggle is in vain, and that the quibbles
of law will transfer into other hands a possession I am foolish enough
to value the more from my inability to maintain it"