through the cold reflection of the blaze, the colder landscape shudders in the wind, and a grey mist creeps along : the only traveller besides the waste of clouds.
My Lady lounges in a great chair in the chimney-corner, and Sir Leicester takes another great chair opposite. The lawyer stands before the fire, with his hand out at arm's length, shading his face. He looks across his arm at my Lady.
"Yes," he says, "I inquired about the man, and found him. And, what is very strange, I found him—"
" Not to be any out-of-the-way person, I am afraid ! " Lady Dedlock languidly anticipates.
" I found him dead."
" O dear me ! " remonstrated Sir Leicester. Not so much shocked by the fact, as by the fact of the fact being mentioned.
" I was directed to his lodging—a miserable, poverty-stricken place—and I found him dead."
"You will excuse me, Mr. Tulkinghorn," observes Sir Leicester. " I think the less said—"
" Pray, Sir Leicester, let me hear the story out ; " (it is my Lady speaking). "It is quite a story for twilight. How very shocking ! Dead ? "
Mr. Tulkinghorn re-asserts it by another inclination of his head.
" Whether by his own hand—"
" Upon my honor ! " cries Sir Leicester. " Really ! "
" Do let me hear the story ! " says my Lady.
" Whatever you desire, my dear. But, I must say—"
" No, you mustn't say ! Go on, Mr. Tulkinghorn."
Sir Leicester's gallantry concedes the point; though he still feels that to bring this sort of squalor among the upper classes is really—really—
" I was about to say," resumes the lawyer, with undisturbed calmness, " that whether he had died by his own hand or not, it was beyond my power to tell you. I should amend that phrase, however, by saying that he had unquestionably died of his own act; though whether by his own deliberate intention, or by mischance, can never certainly be known. The coroner's jury found that he took the poison accidentally."
" And what kind , of man," my Lady asks, " was this deplorable creature ? "
" Very difficult to say," returns the lawyer, shaking his head. " He had lived so wretchedly, and was so neglected, with his gipsy color, and his wild black hair and beard, that I should have considered him the commonest of the common. The surgeon had a notion that he had once been something better, both in appearance and condition."
" What did they call the wretched being ? "
" They called him what he had called himself, but no one knew his name."
" Not even any one who had attended on him ? "
" No one had attended on him. He was found dead. In fact, I found him."
" Without any clue to anything more ? "
"Without any; there was," says the lawyer, meditatively, "an old portmanteau ; but—No, there were no papers."
