When she first appeared, she stood at the door, awed and
curtseying in the presence, and muttering sounds which, possibly
intended for blessings, had, from the harsh tone and witch-like look of
the speaker, every appearance of malediction; but when interrogated on
the subject of the story, she rose at once into consequence,--her figure
seemed frightfully dilated, like that of Virgil’s Alecto, who exchanges
in a moment the appearance of a feeble old woman for that of a menacing
fury. She walked deliberately across the room, seated, or rather
squatted herself on the hearth-stone like a hare in her form, spread her
bony and withered hands towards the blaze, and rocked for a considerable
time in silence before she commenced her tale. When she had finished it,
Melmoth remained in astonishment at the state of mind to which the late
singular circumstances had reduced him,--at finding himself listening
with varying and increasing emotions of interest, curiosity, and terror,
to a tale so wild, so improbable, nay, so actually incredible, that he
at least blushed for the folly he could not conquer. The result of these
impressions was, a resolution to visit the closet, and examine the
manuscript that very night. This resolution he found it impossible to execute immediately, for, on
inquiring for lights, the gouvernante confessed the very last had been
burnt at _his honor’s_ wake; and a bare-footed boy was charged to run
for life and death to the neighbouring village for candles; and if you
could _borry_ a couple of candlesticks, added the housekeeper. “Are
there no candlesticks in the house?” said Melmoth. “There are, honey,
plinty, but it’s no time to be opening the old chest, for the plated
ones, in regard of their being at the bottom of it, and the brass ones
that’s _in it_ (in the house), one of them has no socket, and the other
has no bottom.” “And how did you make shift yourself,” said Melmoth. “I
stuck it in a potatoe,” quoth the housekeeper. So the _gossoon_ ran for
life and death, and Melmoth, towards the close of the evening, was left
alone to meditate. It was an evening apt for meditation, and Melmoth had his fill of it
before the messenger returned. The weather was cold and gloomy; heavy
clouds betokened a long and dreary continuance of autumnal rains; cloud
after cloud came sweeping on like the dark banners of an approaching
host, whose march is for desolation. As Melmoth leaned against the
window, whose dismantled frame, and pieced and shattered panes, shook
with every gust of wind, his eye encountered nothing but that most
cheerless of all prospects, a miser’s garden,--walls broken down,
grass-grown walks whose grass was not even green, dwarfish, doddered,
leafless trees, and a luxuriant crop of nettles and weeds rearing their
unlovely heads where there had once been flowers, all waving and bending
in capricious and unsightly forms, as the wind sighed over them. It was
the verdure of the church yard, the garden of death. He turned for
relief to the room, but no relief was there,--the wainscotting dark with
dirt, and in many places cracked and starting from the walls,--the rusty
grate, so long unconscious of a fire, that nothing but a sullen smoke
could be coaxed to issue from between its dingy bars,--the crazy chairs,
their torn bottoms of rush drooping inwards, and the great leathern seat
displaying the stuffing round the worn edges, while the nails, though
they kept their places, had failed to keep the covering they once
fastened,--the chimney-piece, which, tarnished more by time than by
smoke, displayed for its garniture half a pair of snuffers, a tattered
almanack of 1750, a time-keeper dumb for want of repair, and a rusty
fowling-piece without a lock.--No wonder the spectacle of desolation
drove Melmoth back to his own thoughts, restless and uncomfortable as
they were. He recapitulated the Sybil’s story word by word, with the air
of a man who is cross-examining an evidence, and trying to make him
contradict himself. “The first of the Melmoths, she says, who settled in Ireland, was an
officer in Cromwell’s army, who obtained a grant of lands, the
confiscated property of an Irish family attached to the royal cause. The
elder brother of this man was one who had travelled abroad, and resided
so long on the Continent, that his family had lost all recollection of
him. Their memory was not stimulated by their affection, for there were
strange reports concerning the traveller. He was said to be (like the
“damned magician, great Glendower,”) “a gentleman profited in strange
concealments.”

It must be remembered, that at this period, and even to a later, the
belief in astrology and witchcraft was very general. Even so late as the
reign of Charles II. Dryden calculated the nativity of his son Charles,
the ridiculous books of Glanville were in general circulation, and
Delrio and Wierus were so popular, that even a dramatic writer
(Shadwell) quoted copiously from them, in the notes subjoined to his
curious comedy of the Lancashire witches. It was said, that during the
life-time of Melmoth, the traveller paid him a visit; and though he must
have then been considerably advanced in life, to the astonishment of his
family, he did not betray the slightest trace of being a year older than
when they last beheld him. His visit was short, he said nothing of the
past or the future, nor did his family question him. It was said that
they did not feel themselves perfectly at ease in his presence. On his
departure he left them his picture, (the same which Melmoth saw in the
closet, bearing date 1646), and they saw him no more. Some years after,
a person arrived from England, directed to Melmoth’s house, in pursuit
of the traveller, and exhibiting the most marvellous and unappeasable
solicitude to obtain some intelligence of him. The family could give him
none, and after some days of restless inquiry and agitation, he
departed, leaving behind him, either through negligence or intention, a
manuscript, containing an extraordinary account of the circumstances
under which he had met John Melmoth the Traveller (as he was called). The manuscript and portrait were both preserved, and of the original a
report spread that he was still alive, and had been frequently seen in
Ireland even to the present century,--but that he was never known to
appear but on the approaching death of one of the family, nor even then,
unless when the evil passions or habits of the individual had cast a
shade of gloomy and fearful interest over their dying hour.