The Haunted Man and the Ghosts Bargain | Page 2

above its heavy chimney stalks; its old trees, insulted by the
neighbouring smoke, which deigned to droop so low when it was very
feeble and the weather very moody; its grass- plots, struggling with the
mildewed earth to be grass, or to win any show of compromise; its
silent pavements, unaccustomed to the tread of feet, and even to the
observation of eyes, except when a stray face looked down from the
upper world, wondering what nook it was; its sun-dial in a little
bricked-up corner, where no sun had straggled for a hundred years, but
where, in compensation for the sun's neglect, the snow would lie for
weeks when it lay nowhere else, and the black east wind would spin
like a huge humming-top, when in all other places it was silent and
still.
His dwelling, at its heart and core--within doors--at his fireside- -was
so lowering and old, so crazy, yet so strong, with its worn- eaten beams
of wood in the ceiling, and its sturdy floor shelving downward to the
great oak chimney-piece; so environed and hemmed in by the pressure
of the town yet so remote in fashion, age, and custom; so quiet, yet so
thundering with echoes when a distant voice was raised or a door was
shut,--echoes, not confined to the many low passages and empty rooms,
but rumbling and grumbling till they were stifled in the heavy air of the
forgotten Crypt where the Norman arches were half-buried in the earth.
You should have seen him in his dwelling about twilight, in the dead
winter time.
When the wind was blowing, shrill and shrewd, with the going down of
the blurred sun. When it was just so dark, as that the forms of things
were indistinct and big--but not wholly lost. When sitters by the fire
began to see wild faces and figures, mountains and abysses,
ambuscades and armies, in the coals. When people in the streets bent
down their heads and ran before the weather. When those who were
obliged to meet it, were stopped at angry corners, stung by wandering
snow-flakes alighting on the lashes of their eyes,--which fell too
sparingly, and were blown away too quickly, to leave a trace upon the
frozen ground. When windows of private houses closed up tight and

warm. When lighted gas began to burst forth in the busy and the quiet
streets, fast blackening otherwise. When stray pedestrians, shivering
along the latter, looked down at the glowing fires in kitchens, and
sharpened their sharp appetites by sniffing up the fragrance of whole
miles of dinners.
When travellers by land were bitter cold, and looked wearily on
gloomy landscapes, rustling and shuddering in the blast. When
mariners at sea, outlying upon icy yards, were tossed and swung above
the howling ocean dreadfully. When lighthouses, on rocks and
headlands, showed solitary and watchful; and benighted sea-birds
breasted on against their ponderous lanterns, and fell dead. When little
readers of story-books, by the firelight, trembled to think of Cassim
Baba cut into quarters, hanging in the Robbers' Cave, or had some
small misgivings that the fierce little old woman, with the crutch, who
used to start out of the box in the merchant Abudah's bedroom, might,
one of these nights, be found upon the stairs, in the long, cold, dusky
journey up to bed.
When, in rustic places, the last glimmering of daylight died away from
the ends of avenues; and the trees, arching overhead, were sullen and
black. When, in parks and woods, the high wet fern and sodden moss,
and beds of fallen leaves, and trunks of trees, were lost to view, in
masses of impenetrable shade. When mists arose from dyke, and fen,
and river. When lights in old halls and in cottage windows, were a
cheerful sight. When the mill stopped, the wheelwright and the
blacksmith shut their workshops, the turnpike- gate closed, the plough
and harrow were left lonely in the fields, the labourer and team went
home, and the striking of the church clock had a deeper sound than at
noon, and the churchyard wicket would be swung no more that night.
When twilight everywhere released the shadows, prisoned up all day,
that now closed in and gathered like mustering swarms of ghosts. When
they stood lowering, in corners of rooms, and frowned out from behind
half-opened doors. When they had full possession of unoccupied
apartments. When they danced upon the floors, and walls, and ceilings
of inhabited chambers, while the fire was low, and withdrew like
ebbing waters when it sprang into a blaze. When they fantastically
mocked the shapes of household objects, making the nurse an ogress,
the rocking-horse a monster, the wondering child, half-scared and

half-amused, a stranger to itself,--the very tongs upon the hearth, a
straddling giant with his