House I used to see at will the roof of the
Globe Theatre. It stood beyond the bend
which the river makes in forming the bank
upon which Southwark stands. It was the
summer theatre of the company of which
William Shakespeare was a proprietor,
performer, and dramatic author. I have often
seen the bright surface of the sweet Italian
Thames covered with the gondolas of the
aristocracy of the reigns of Elizabeth and
James rowing towards it from their water
gates to witness the earlier performances of
Hamlet or Macbeth. On turning my eyes
to the west I have seen Whitehall upon the
tempestuous third of September, which
carried away the great spirit of Oliver
Cromwell.

Isaac Newton, Francis Bacon, William
Shakespeare, William Harvey, and Oliver
Cromwell were my principal London ghosts,
and it was by seeing them as they lived, by
listening to their talk, and by musing over
their thoughts that I laid the phantoms of my
hallucinated childhood, and won my present
measure of mental health. Diseased, indeed,
must the soul be which would not be somewhat
healed by the society of the sublime
shades who lived upon the banks of the
Thames when science, literature, and liberty
flourished best in England.

THE DEAD SECRET.

CHAPTER THE SIXTEENTH—MOZART PLAYS
FAREWELL.

EXCEPTING that he took leave of Betsey,
the servant-maid, with great cordiality,
Uncle Joseph spoke not another word, after
his parting reply to Mr. Munder, until he and
his niece were alone again under the east wall
of Porthgenna Tower. There, he paused,
looked up at the house, then at his companion,
then back at the house once more, and at
last opened his lips to speak.

"I am sorry, my child," he said. "I am
sorry from my heart. This has been, what
you call in England, a very bad job."

Thinking that he referred to the scene
which had just passed in the housekeeper's
room, Sarah asked his pardon for having been
the innocent means of bringing him into
angry collision with such a person as Mr.
Munder.

"No! no! no!" he cried.  I was not
thinking of the man of the big body and the
big words. He made me angry, it is not to
be denied; but that is all over and gone now.
I put him and his big words away from me,
as I kick this stone, here, from the pathway
into the road. It is not of your Munders, or
your housekeepers, or your Betzies, that I
now speak—it is of something that is nearer
to you, and nearer to me also, because I make
of your interest my own interest, too. I shall
tell you what it is, while we walk on—for I
see in your face, Sarah, that you are restless
and in fear so long as we stop in the
neighbourhood of this dungeon-house. Come! I
am ready for the march. There is the path.
Let us go back by it, and pick up our little
baggages at the inn where we left them, on
the other side of this windy wilderness of a
place."

"Yes, yes, uncle! Let us lose no time;
let us walk fast. Don't be afraid of tiring
me; I am much stronger now."

They turned into the same path by which
they had approached Porthgenna Tower in
the afternoon. By the time they had walked
over a little more than the first hundred
yards of their journey, Jacob, the gardener's
boy, stole out from behind the ruinous enclosure
at the north side of the house, with his
hoe in his hand. The sun had just set, but
there was a fine light still over the wide, open
surface of the moor; and Jacob paused to
let the old man and his niece get farther away
from the building before he followed them.
The housekeeper's instructions had directed
him just to keep them in sight, and no more;
and, if he happened to observe that they
stopped and turned round to look behind
them, he was to stop, too, and pretend to be
digging with his hoe, as if he was at work on
the moorland. Stimulated by the promise of
a sixpence, if he was careful to do exactly as
he had been told, Jacob kept his instructions
in his memory, and kept his eye on the two
strangers, and promised as fairly to earn
the reward in prospect for him as a boy
could.

"And, now, my child, I shall tell you what
it is I am sorry for," resumed Uncle Joseph,
as they proceeded along the path. "I am
sorry that we have come out upon this journey,
and run our little risk, and had our little
scolding, and gained nothing. The word you
said in my ear, Sarah, when I was getting
you out of the faint (and you should have
come out of it sooner, if the muddle-headed
people of the dungeon-house had been quicker
with the water)—the word you said in my ear
was not much, but it was enough to tell me
that we have taken this journey in vain. I
may hold my tongue, I may make my best
face at it, I may be content to walk
blindfolded with a mystery that lets no peep of
daylight into my eyes—but it is not the less
true, that the one thing your heart was most
set on doing, when we started on this journey,
is the one thing also, that you have not done.
I know that, if I know nothing else; and I
say again, it is a bad job—yes, yes, upon my
life and faith, there is no disguise to put upon,
it; it is, in your plainest English, a very bad
job."

As he concluded the expression of his
sympathy in these quaint terms, the dread and
distrust, the watchful terror, that marred the
natural softness of Sarah's eyes, disappeared
in an expression of sorrowful tenderness,
which seemed to give back to them all their
beauty.

"Don't be sorry for me, uncle," she said,