offer.’  As soon, therefore, as the necessary preparations were made, and Anna had partaken of the good substantial fare set before her, she begged to be allowed to retire to rest, as she was fatigued with her day’s journey, and wished to set out again early the next morning.  Her request was immediately complied with; the good clergyman himself insisting upon seeing her safely to her destination; when, having ascertained that proper provision had been made for her comfort, and told her that refreshment should be provided for her early next morning at his house, he bade her good-night, and left her to repose.  As soon as he was gone, Anna proceeded to take a more particular survey of her apartment.  It was a large, but not very lofty room, panelled with oak, and having two windows looking across a wide lawn to the main road.  The bright fire in the ample fireplace illuminated the richly-carved cornice, with its grotesque heads and fanciful scrollwork.  It had evidently been a dining-room, for some of the heavy furniture, in the fashion of the period in which it had been last inhabited, still remained.  There were the massive table and the old-fashioned high-backed chairs, with covers of what had once been bright embroidery, doubtless the work of many a fair hand; but what attracted her attention most, was a picture over the chimney-piece.  It was painted on the wooden panel; perhaps the reason it had never been removed, though evidently the work of no mean artist.  It represented a scene of wild revelry.  At the head of a table, covered with a profusion of fruits, with glasses and decanters of various elegant forms, stood a young man; high above his head he held a goblet filled to the brim with wine; excitement flashed from his bright blue eyes, and flushed the rounded cheek; light-brown hair, untouched by powder, curled round the low narrow forehead; whilst the small sensual mouth expressed all the worst passions of our nature.  Around the table sat his admiring parasites; young beauty and hoary age, the strength of manhood and the earliest youth, were there, alike debased by the evidences of lawless passion.  With what a master-hand had the painter seized upon the individual expression of each!  There the glutton, and here the sot; now the eye fell on the mean pander or the roystering boon-companion; now on the wit, looking with a roguish leer upon his fair neighbour, or the miserable wretch maudlin in his cups; and again on the knave profiting by the recklessness of those around him.  The bright blaze of the fire lit up the different countenances with a vivid and lifelike expression; and as Anna gazed, fascinated and spell-bound, her thoughts naturally reverted to what she had heard of the life and character of the last owner of the place.  Was that youthful figure, so evidently the master of the revel, a portrait of the unhappy man himself who had thus unconsciously left behind him not only a memorial, but a warning.  How often had the now silent halls echoed to the brawl