tutored into silence. Profound stillness reigned throughout and around the Abbey, except when the occasional shutting of a door would peal in long reverberations through the galleries, or the heavy tread of the pensive butler would wake the hollow echoes of the hall. Scythrop stalked about like the grand inquisitor, and the servants flitted past him like familiars. In his evening meditations on the terrace, under the ivy of the ruined tower, the only sounds that came to his ear were the rustling of the wind in the ivy,—the plaintive voices of the feathered choristers, the owls,—the occasional striking of the Abbey-clock,—and the monotonous dash of the sea on its low and level shore. In the mean time he drank Madeira, and laid deep schemes for a thorough repair of the crazy fabric of human nature.
