“My gray-haired guide, who commiserated my situation, was very inquisitive about ‘the war and Lord Wellington;’ asked whether all the Spaniards lived on ‘mules’ flesh fried with onions,’ as he ’had been told for truth;’ inquired what ‘our side’ thought of ’Boney’s covenant with the devil,’ a covenant, (according to his reading,) to this effect, that ’the devil had given Boney a lease of luck for threescore and three years, and that when it was up he was to be shot by a Spanish maiden with a silver bullet.’  Many folks, he said, believed all this to be true and sartain; but that he, for his part, ’did not hold with it:  what did I think?’ But however talkative about the war, my venerable pilot was reserved about ——­ House.  I asked him if he knew it.  ’These fifty years and more,’ was his answer.  ’The House of Mystery; good people live there now,—­yes, good people, kind people,—­a blessed change for all about and around the House of Mystery.  More he would not utter.  At length I reached the winning post, hobbled in, received a cordial welcome, and retired early to bed.

“None but those who have lain for weeks in a crowded military hospital, who have battled day by day with death, now flushed with fever, now racked with agonizing spasmodic action in every nerve, can conceive the effect of the quiet, the pure air, the bracing freshness of the country.  The stillness which reigned around,—­the peaceful landscape beneath my window,—­the balmy fragrance of the flowers,—­the hush of woods reposing in all the stillness of a summer’s twilight,—­the faint tinkling of the distant sheep-bell,—­the musical murmur of the rill which gurgled gaily and gladly from beneath the base of the sun-dial,—­the deer dotted over the park, and grazing lazily in groups beneath the branching oaks, made up a picture which soothed and calmed me.  I went to bed satisfied that I should sleep.  I did so without a single twinge till after midnight.  Then I was roused by a grating sound at a distance.  It drew nearer, became more and more distinct, and presently at a pelting pace, up drove a carriage and four.  I say four, because a man used to horses all his life, can, by their tramp, judge, though blindfold, pretty accurately as to their numbers.  I heard the easy roll of the carriage, the grating of the wheels on the gravel, the sharp pull-up at the main entrance, the impatient pawing of the animals on the hard and well-rolled road.  All this I caught most distinctly.  But though I listened keenly I heard no bell ring, no door unclose, no servant hasten to these new arrivals.  I thought it odd.  I struck my repeater.  ’A quarter to one.  Strange hour, surely, for visitors to arrive!  However, no business of mine.  I have not, happily, to rise and do the honors.’  And, after a yawn or two, and a hurried, though I trust grateful acknowledgment for the comparative ease I was enjoying, I turned upon my side and dozed off.  I had slept about two