furniture, if you can't easily get at 'um, take the

poker.'

Sir Charles Fairland took his seal ring from his hand, and very carefully sealed up again every lock of the escritoire.

CHAPTER X.

A glorious remnant of the Gothic pile

(While yet the church was Rome's) stood half apart.

But in the noontide of the moon, and when

The wind is winged from one point of Heaven,
There moans a strange unearthly sound, which then
Is musical-a dying accent driven

Through the huge arch, which soars and sinks again;
Some deem it but the distant echo given

Back to the night wind by the waterfall,

And harmonized by the old choral wall.-Byron.

THE last painful scene was still to be gone through. Sir Charles Fairland prepared to meet it with seeming fortitude; as on the day of the funeral, he had not only his own spirits, but those of his sisters' to support; for at the date of our narrative it was the inconsiderate, if not the unfeeling, custom to expect the attendance of the nearest female relatives as well as the male on such an occasion.

The

daughters of the deceased, therefore, were to be

present in the chapel.

The circumstances of Sir John Fairland's death had excited so much interest in the neighbourhood, and were so much the public talk, that it was apprehended a very great concourse of people-notwithstanding the comparative privacy of burying in the chapel-would be collected to witness the ceremony. As a further means of insuring privacy, therefore, the two executors changed the hour of interment, and directed that it should take place at night with no more state than was absolutely indispensable.

The evening of the appointed time set in with a melancholy presage. The ocean was in gloom, gleams of a pale, cold light were seen upon it, and the gathering clouds begun to lower. The sun had set over the valley of Hartland, and the woods gradually darkened around, as the tenants and the few persons invited to attend the solemnity arrived at the Abbey, habited in long cloaks and scarves of black.

It was between the hours of nine and ten in the evening, when the mourning train issued from the

gates to cross the court that led to the ancient chapel within whose consecrated precincts the interment was to take place. The procession was certainly impressive. The servants of the household walked first, two and two, each bearing a lighted torch. Next came the officials of the ceremony, with banners and achievements. The coffin followed, covered with a black velvet pall that was supported by eight neighbouring gentlemen. Immediately after walked Sir Charles Fairland, as chief mourner, followed by such other male mourners as were akin to the deceased. The deeply-afflicted daughters came next, with the females of the household. Lady Fairland, however, was not present; she was said to be greatly indisposed. The tenants and inferior servants closed the train. Such was the pomp of the time, that this, though including more than seventy persons in attendance, was deemed a very small funeral for a man of Sir John Fairland's rank and fortune.

There was something peculiarly solemn and impressive in the ceremony and its accompaniments. The chapel had been neglected for many years. An

interment had not, perhaps, taken place in it since the dissolution of the Abbey at the Reformation. From time and disuse the walls were damp, and in some places moss-grown. The roof was in bad condition; the clustered columns that supported it, and formed the division of the aisles, were here and there twisted with ivy, and many of the capitals broken and partially fallen from want of repair; whilst the vaulted and richly fretted roof itself had afforded a shelter to the bats and the night birds, which, now disturbed in their 'solitary reign,' darted from their abode, and flew about on agitated wings above the heads of the mourning train. Many of the windows were without glass, or retained it only in fragments. The great east window, however, was tolerably perfect, and still exhibited by day those deep and glowing hues that were once the pride of Gothic art in buildings sacred to Christian devotion.

The whole of the interior looked dark and dreary, and as the torches threw strong but partial gleams of light on pillar, vault, and arch, they did but render more distinct the ruin and neglect into which the