There
was, as regards stone and lime, little change here; he soon recognised
the half-sunk window where, on the Sunday evenings, he had sometimes
tapped as a humorous sign that he was about to enter, which had often
been responded to by Mary's finger on the glass, as a token that he
would be welcome. It was sixty years since then. A small corb would now
hold all that remained of both mother and daughter. He turned away his
head as if sick, and was about to retrace his steps. Yet the wish to
enter that house rose again like a yearning; and what more in the world
than some souvenir of the only being on earth he ever loved was there
for him to yearn for? All his hundred thousand pounds were now, dear as
money had been to him, nothing in comparison of the gratification of
seeing the room where she was born--yea, where probably she had died. In
as short a time as his trembling limbs would carry him down the stair,
which in the ardour of his young blood he had often taken at a bound, he
was at the foot of it. There was there the old familiar dark passage,
with doors on either side, but it was the farthest door that was of any
interest to him.
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