His dwelling, at its heart and core - within doors - at his
fireside - was so lowering and old, so crazy, yet so strong, with
its worn-eaten beams of wood in the ceiling, and its sturdy floor
shelving downward to the great oak chimney-piece; so environed and
hemmed in by the pressure of the town yet so remote in fashion,
age, and custom; so quiet, yet so thundering with echoes when a
distant voice was raised or a door was shut, - echoes, not confined
to the many low passages and empty rooms, but rumbling and
grumbling till they were stifled in the heavy air of the forgotten
Crypt where the Norman arches were half-buried in the earth.
You should have seen him in his dwelling about twilight, in the
dead winter time.
When the wind was blowing, shrill and shrewd, with the going down
of the blurred sun. When it was just so dark, as that the forms of
things were indistinct and big - but not wholly lost. When sitters
by the fire began to see wild faces and figures, mountains and
abysses, ambuscades and armies, in the coals. When people in the
streets bent down their heads and ran before the weather. When
those who were obliged to meet it, were stopped at angry corners,
stung by wandering snow-flakes alighting on the lashes of their
eyes, - which fell too sparingly, and were blown away too quickly,
to leave a trace upon the frozen ground.
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