By the time we got down to the ground floor I was pretty tired of empty rooms, oak panelled, and passages and oak staircases, and of talk, and impatient to get away.

But no, I had not seen the housekeeper's room--I must see that!--and so into another great vacant room I was dragged, and to keep me as long as possible in that last room he began unlocking and flinging open all the old oak cupboards and presses.

Glancing round at the long array of empty shelves, I noticed a small brown-paper parcel, thick with dust, in a corner, and as it was the only movable thing I had seen in that vacant house I asked him what the parcel contained.

Books, he replied--they had been left as of no value when the house was cleared of furniture.

As I wished to see the books he undid the parcel; it contained forty copies of a small quarto-shaped book of sonnets, with the late squire's name as author on the title page.