However, we have less to do with the gardens than, probably, the elves have; and as Roger now, just at breaking day, is approaching the windows somewhat too curiously for a poor man’s manners, it may not be amiss if we bear him company.  He had pretty well recovered of his fit of discontent, for morning air and exercise can soon chase gloom away; so he cheerily tramped along, thinking as he went, how that, after all, it is a middling happy world, and how that the raindrops, now that it had cleared up, hung like diamonds on the laurels, when of a sudden, as he turned a corner near the house, there broke upon his ear, at that quiet hour, such a storm of boisterous sounds—­voices so loud with oaths and altercation—­such a calling, clattering, and quarrelling, as he had never heard the like before.  So no wonder that he stepped aside to see it.

The noise proceeded from a ground-floor window, or rather from three windows, lighted up, and hung with draperies of crimson and gold:  one of the casements, flaring meretriciously in the modest eye of morn, stood wide open down to the floor, probably to cool a heated atmosphere; and when Roger Acton, with a natural curiosity, went on tiptoe, looked in, and just put aside the curtain for a peep, to know what on earth could be the matter, he saw a vision of waste and wealth, at which he stood like one amazed, for a poor man’s mind could never have conceived its equal.

Evidently, he had intruded on the latter end of a long and luxurious revel.  Wax-lights, guttering down in gilded chandeliers, poured their mellow radiance round in multiplied profusion—­for mirrors made them infinite; crimson and gold were the rich prevailing tints in that wide and warm banqueting-room; gayly-coloured pictures, set in frames that Roger fancied massive gold, hung upon the walls at intervals; a wagon-load of silver was piled upon the sideboard; there blazed in the burnished grate such a fire as poverty might imagine on a frozen winter’s night, but never can have thawed its blood beside:  fruits, and wines, and costly glass were scattered in prodigal disorder on the board—­just now deserted of its noisy guests, who had crowded round a certain green table, where cards and heaps of sovereigns appeared to be mingled in a mass.  Roger had never so much as conceived it possible that there could be wealth like this:  it was a fairy-land of Mammon in his eyes:  he stood gasping like a man enchanted; and in the contemplation of these little hills of gold—­in their covetous longing contemplation, he forgot the noisy quarrel he had turned aside to see, and thirsted for that rich store earnestly.