THE USURER AND THE OAKEN BOX.

 

The room which Sir Henry Ashwoode entered was one of squalid disorder¹. It was a large apartment, originally handsomely wainscoted, but damp and vermin had made woeful havoc² in the broad panels, and the ceiling was covered with green and black blotches³ of mildew⁴. No carpet covered the bare boards, which were strewn with fragments of papers, rags, splinters of an old chest, which had been partially⁵ broken up to light the fire, and occasionally a potato-skin, a bone, or an old shoe. The furniture was scant⁶, and no one piece matched the other. Little and bad as it was, its distribution about the room was more comfortless and wretched still. All was dreary⁷ disorder, dust, and dirt, and damp, and mildew, and rat-holes.

 

By a large grate, scarcely half filled with a pile of ashes and a few fragments of smouldering turf, sat Gordon Chancey, the master of this notable establishment; his arm rested upon a dirty deal table, and his fingers played listlessly with a dull and battered⁸ pewter goblet⁹, which he had just replenished¹⁰ from a two-quart measure of strong beer which stood upon the table, and whose contents had dabbled¹¹ that piece of furniture with sundry¹²

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