Its gnarled stump, now stunted and decaying, had scarcely one token of life upon its scattered branches.  Following a narrow walk, nearly obliterated, I entered a paved court.  The first tramp awoke a train of echoes that seemed as though they had slumbered since my departure, and now started from their sleep to greet or to admonish the returning truant.  Grass in luxuriant tufts, capriciously disposed, grew about in large patches.  The breeze passed heavily by, rustling the dark swathe, and murmuring fitfully as it departed.  Desolation seemed to have marked the spot for her own—­the grim abode of solitude and despair.  During twenty years’ sojourn in a strange land memory had still, with untiring delight, painted the old mansion in all its primeval primness and simplicity—­fresh as I had left it, full of buoyancy and delight, to take possession of the paradise which imagination had created.  I had, indeed, been informed that at my father’s death it became the habitation of a stranger; but no intelligence as to its present condition had ever reached me.  Being at L——­, and only some twenty miles distant, I could not resist the temptation of once more gazing on the old Manor-house, and of comparing its present aspect with that but too faithfully engrafted on my recollections.  To all appearance the house was tenantless.  I tried the door of a side kitchen or scullery:  it was fastened, but the rusty bolts yielded to no very forcible pressure; and I once more penetrated into the kitchen, that exhaustless magazine which had furnished ham and eggs, greens and bacon, with other sundry and necessary condiments, to the progenitors of our race for at least two centuries.  A marvellous change!—­to me it appeared as if wrought in a moment, so recently had memory reinstated the scenes of my youth in all their pristine splendour.  Now no smoke rolled lazily away from the heavy billet; no blaze greeted my sight; no savoury steam regaled the sense.  Dark, cheerless, cold,—­the long bars emitted no radiance; the hearth unswept, on which Growler once panted with heat and fatness.

Though night was fast approaching, I could not resist the temptation of once more exploring the deserted chambers, the scene of many a youthful frolic.  I sprang with reckless facility up the vast staircase.  The shallow steps were not sufficiently accommodating to my impatience, and I leapt rather than ran, with the intention of paying my first visit to that cockaigne of childhood, that paradise of little fools—­the nursery.  How small, dwindled almost into a span, appeared that once mighty and almost boundless apartment, every nook of which was a separate territory, every drawer and cupboard the boundary of another kingdom! three or four strides brought me to the window;—­the broad church-tower was still visible, peacefully reposing in the dim and heavy twilight.  The evening-bell was tolling:  what a host of recollections were awakened at the sound!  Days and hours long forgotten