'Speak low.'
There was a kind of awe about the place, which would have rendered it
difficult to speak in any other manner. Gabriel whispered 'Yes,' and
followed him upstairs.
Everything was just as they had seen it last. There was a sense of
closeness from the exclusion of fresh air, and a gloom and heaviness
around, as though long imprisonment had made the very silence sad. The
homely hangings of the beds and windows had begun to droop; the dust lay
thick upon their dwindling folds; and damps had made their way through
ceiling, wall, and floor. The boards creaked beneath their tread, as if
resenting the unaccustomed intrusion; nimble spiders, paralysed by the
taper's glare, checked the motion of their hundred legs upon the wall,
or dropped like lifeless things upon the ground; the death-watch ticked;
and the scampering feet of rats and mice rattled behind the wainscot.
As they looked about them on the decaying furniture, it was strange to
find how vividly it presented those to whom it had belonged, and
with whom it was once familiar. Grip seemed to perch again upon his
high-backed chair; Barnaby to crouch in his old favourite corner by the
fire; the mother to resume her usual seat, and watch him as of old.
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