fire, the tongs, and the hammer, he fashioned these nails, with an ease
and quickness which showed an expert practitioner, into instruments that
would readily move the wards of any common country-made lock. He did not
care for weapons. He trusted at need to his own powerful hands. It was
no longer, too, the affair of a robber unknown, unguessed, who might have
to fight his way out of an alarmed household. It was but the visit which
he, Jasper Losely, Esquire, thought fit to pay, however unceremoniously
and unseasonably, to the house of a father-in-law! At the worst, should
he fail in finding Darrell, or securing an unwitnessed interview--should
he, instead, alarm the household, it would be a proof of the integrity of
his intentions that he had no weapons save those which Nature bestows on
the wild man as the mightiest of her wild beasts. At night he mounted
his horse, but went out of his way, keeping the high-road for an hour or
two, in order to allow ample time for the farmers to have quitted the
rent-feast, and the old Manor-house to be hushed in sleep. At last, when
he judged the coast clear and the hour ripe, he wound back into the lane
towards Fawley; and when the spire of its hamlet-church came in sight
through the frosty starlit air, he dismounted--led the horse into one of
the thick beech-woods that make the prevailing characteristic of the wild
country round that sequestered dwelling-place--fastened the animal to a
tree, and stalked towards the park-pales on foot. Lightly, as a wolf
enters a sheepfold, he swung himself over the moss-grown fence; he gained
the buttresses of the great raw pile; high and clear above, from
Darrell's chamber, streamed the light; all the rest of the old house
was closed and dark, buried no doubt in slumber.

He is now in the hollows of the skeleton pile; he mounts the ladder; the
lock of the door before him yields to his rude implements but artful
hand. He is in the long gallery; the moonlight comes broad and clear
through the large casements. What wealth of art is on the walls! but how