" The speaker
stood peering discontentedly into the gloom without: "But you'll not
trouble yoursen, Tammas, I daursay."
"Well, I'm not Godamighty to mak' t' rain gie over," was the man's
cheerful reply, as he took the bellows to the damp wood which lay feebly
crackling and fizzing on the wide hearth. His exertions produced a
spasmodic flame, which sent flickering tongues of light through the wide
spaces and shadows of the hall. Otherwise the deepening gloom of the
October evening was lightened only by the rays of one feebly burning lamp
standing apparently in a corridor or gallery just visible beyond a richly
pillared archway which led from the hall to the interior of the house.
Through this archway could be seen the dim ascending lines of a great
double staircase; while here and there a white carved doorway or cornice
glimmered from the darkness.
A stately Georgian house, built in a rich classical style, and dating
from 1740: so a trained eye would have interpreted the architectural and
decorative features faintly disclosed by lamp and fire. But the house and
its contents--the house and its condition--were strangely at war.
Everywhere the seemly lines and lovely ornament due to its original
builders were spoilt or obliterated by the sordid confusion to which some
modern owner had brought it. It was not a house apparently, so far as its
present use went, but a warehouse. There was properly speaking no
furniture in it; only a multitude of packing-cases, boxes of all shapes
and sizes, piled upon or leaning against each other.
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