Every  day  he  dined  at  his  club  and  drank  his  bottle  or  two  of
port  wine,  and  every  night  came  home  to  the  Temple  and  went
to  bed  in  his  lonely  chambers.  This  had  gone  on  many  years  with-
out variation,  when  one  night  he  had  a  fit  on  coming  home,  and
fell  and  cut  his  head  deep,  but  partly  recovered  and  groped
about  in  the  dark  to  find  the  door.  When  he  was  afterwards  dis-
covered, dead,  it  was  clearly  established  by  the  marks  of  his
hands  about  the  room  that  he  must  have  done  so.  Now,  this
chanced  on  the  night  of  Christmas  Eve,  and  over  him  lived  a
young  fellow  who  had  sisters  and  young  country-friends,  and  who
gave  them  a  little  party  that  night,  in  the  course  of  which  they
played  at  Blindman's  Buff.  They  played  that  game,  for  their
greater  sport,  by  the  light  of  the  fire  only;  and  once,  when  they
were  all  quietly  rustling  and  stealing  about,  and  the  blindman
was  trying  to  pick  out  the  prettiest  sister  (for  which  I  am  far
from  blaming  him),  somebody  cried  "Hark!  The  man  below
must  be  playing  Blindman's  Buff  by  himself  to-night!"  They
listened,  and  they  heard  sounds  of  some  one  falling  about  and
stumbling  against  furniture,  and  they  all  laughed  at  the  con-
ceit, 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,  blindfolded,  in  the  two  sets  of  chambers.
DICKENS.
