the passage of a thoroughfare dignified by the Borough Hall, the Borough Academy and the Parish Church, until, free of the sober street, it swirled jauntily in the advantageously open space of the Cross, moved speculatively between the rows of shops in the High Street, and entered the more elevated residential district of Knoxhill.

But here it tired quickly of sporting along the weathered, red sand-stone terraces and rustling the ivy on the old stone houses, and seeking the countryside beyond, passed inland once more, straying amongst the prim villas of the select quarter of Wellhall, and fanning the little round plots of crimson-faced geraniums in each front garden. Then, as it drifted carelessly along the decorous thoroughfare which led from this genteel region to the adjacent open country, suddenly it chilled as it struck the last house in the road.

This was a singular dwelling. In size it was small, of such dimensions that it could not have contained more than seven rooms; in its construction solid, with the hard stability of new grey stones; in its architecture unique.

The base of the house had the shape of a narrow rectangle with the wider aspect directed towards the street, with walls which arose, not directly from the earth, but from a stone foundation a foot longer and wider than themselves, and upon which the whole structure seemed to sustain itself like an animal upon its deep-dug paws. The frontage arising from this supporting pedestal reared itself with a cold severity to terminate in one half of its extent in a steeply pitched