furniture, and they all laughed at the conceit, and
went on with their play, more light-hearted and
merry than ever. Thus, those two so different
games of life and death were played out together,
blindfold, in the two sets of chambers.

Such are the occurrences which, coming to
my knowledge, imbued me long ago with a
strong sense of the loneliness of chambers.
There was a fantastic illustration to much the
same purpose implicitly believed by a strange
sort of man now dead, whom I knew when I
had not quite arrived at legal years of discretion,
though I was already in the uncommercial line.

This was a man who, though not more than
thirty, had seen the world in divers
irreconcilable capacities—had been an officer in a South
American regiment among other odd things—
but had not achieved much in any way of life,
and was in debt, and in hiding. He occupied
chambers of the dreariest nature in Lyons Inn;
his name, however, was not upon the door, or
door-post, but in lieu of it stood the name of
a friend who had died in the chambers, and
had given him the furniture. The story arose
out of the furniture, and was to this effect:—
Let the former holder of the chambers whose
name was still upon the door and door-post, be
Mr. Testator.

Mr. Testator took a set of chambers in Lyons
Inn when he had but very scanty furniture for
his bedroom, and none for his sitting-room. He
had lived some wintry months in this
condition, and had found it very bare and cold.
One night, past midnight, when he sat writing
and had still writing to do that must be done
before he went to bed, he found himself out of
coals. He had coals downstairs, but had never
been to his cellar; however, the cellar-key was
on his mantelshelf, and if he went down and
opened the cellar it fitted, he might fairly
assume the coals in that cellar to be his. As to
his laundress, she lived among the coal-waggons
and Thames watermen—for there were Thames
watermen at that time—in some unknown
rat-hole by the river, down lanes and alleys on the
other side of the Strand. As to any other person
to meet him or obstruct him, Lyons Inn
was dreaming, drunk, maudlin, moody, betting,
brooding over bill-discounting or renewing—
  asleep or awake, minding its own affairs. Mr.
Testator took his coalscuttle in one hand, his
candle and key in the other, and descended to
the dismallest underground dens of Lyons Inn,
where the late vehicles in the streets became
thunderous, and all the water-pipes in the
neighbourhood seemed to have Macbeth's Amen
sticking in their throats, and to be trying to get
it out. After groping here and there among
low doors to no purpose, Mr. Testator at length
came to a door with a rusty padlock which his
key fitted. Getting the door open with much
trouble, and looking in, he found, no coals, but a
confused pile of furniture. Alarmed by this
intrusion on another man's property, he locked
the door again, found his own cellar, filled his
scuttle, and returned upstairs.

But the furniture he had seen, ran on castors
across and across Mr. Testator's mind
incessantly, when, in the chill hour of five in the
morning he got to bed. He particularly wanted
a table to write at, and a table expressly made
to be written at, had been the piece of furniture
in the foreground of the heap. When his
laundress emerged from her burrow in the
morning to make his kettle boil, he artfully led
up to the subject of cellars and furniture; but
the two ideas had evidently no connexion in
her mind. When she left him, and he sat at
his breakfast, thinking about the furniture, he
recalled the rusty state of the padlock, and
inferred that the furniture must have been stored
in the cellars for a long time—was perhaps
forgotten—owner dead, perhaps? After thinking
it over, a few days, in the course of which
he could pump nothing out of Lyons Inn about
the furniture, he became desperate, and resolved
to borrow that table. He did so, that night.
He had not had the table long, when he determined
to borrow an easy-chair; he had not had
that long, when he made up his mind to borrow
a bookcase; then, a couch; then, a carpet and
rug. By that time, he felt he was " in furniture
stepped in so far," as that it could be no worse
to borrow it all. Consequently, he borrowed it
all, and locked up the cellar for good. He had
always locked it, after every visit. He had
carried up every separate article in the dead of the
night, and, at the best, had felt as wicked as a
Resurrection Man. Every article was blue and
furry when brought into his rooms, and he had
had, in a murderous and guilty sort of way, to
polish it up while London slept.

Mr. Testator lived in his furnished chambers
two or three years, or more, and gradually lulled
himself into the opinion that the furniture was his
own. This was his convenient state of mind when,
late one night, a step came up the stairs, and a
hand passed over his door feeling for his knocker,
and then one deep and solemn rap was rapped
that might have been a spring in Mr. Testator'
s easy-chair to shoot him out of it: so promptly
was it attended with that effect.

With a candle in his hand, Mr. Testator went
to the door, and found there, a very pale and very
tall man; a man who stooped; a man with very
high shoulders, a very narrow chest, and a very
red nose; a shabby genteel man. He was wrapped
in a long threadbare black coat, fastened up the
front with more pins than buttons, and under
his arm he squeezed an umbrella without a
handle, as if he were playing bagpipes. He said,
"I ask your pardon, but can you tell me—"
and stopped; his eyes resting on some object
within the chambers.

"Can I tell you what?" asked Mr. Testator,
noting this stoppage with quick alarm.

"I ask your pardon," said the stranger, "but
—this is not the inquiry I was going to make—
do I see in there, any small article of property
belonging to me?"

.Mr. Testator was beginning to stammer that
he was not aware—when the visitor slipped past
him, into the chambers. There, in a goblin way
which froze Mr. Testator to the marrow, he