I had made
up my mind to go through with the matter, and no amount of mental
depression, no wintry blasts, no cheerless roads, no desolate goal,
should daunt me; but still I did not like the adventure, and at every
step I felt I liked it less.
Before leaving town I had fortified my inner man with a good dinner and
some excellent wine, but by the time I reached River Hall I might have
fasted for a week, so faint and spiritless did I feel.
"Come, this will never do," I thought, as I turned the key in the
door, and crossed the threshold of the Uninhabited House. "I must not
begin with being chicken-hearted, or I may as well give up the
investigation at once."
The fires I had caused to be kindled in the morning, though almost out
by the time I reached River Hall, had diffused a grateful warmth
throughout the house; and when I put a match to the paper and wood laid
ready in the grate of the room I meant to occupy, and lit the gas, in
the hall, on the landing, and in my sleeping-apartment, I began to think
things did not look so cheerless, after all.
The seals which, for precaution's sake, I had placed on the various
locks, remained intact. I looked to the fastenings of the hall-door,
examined the screws by which the bolts were attached to the wood, and
having satisfied myself that everything of that kind was secure, went
up to my room, where the fire was now crackling and blazing famously,
put the kettle on the hob, drew a chair up close to the hearth,
exchanged my boots for slippers, lit a pipe, pulled out my law-books,
and began to read.
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