To this constant
exposure to the open air I ascribe it mainly that I did not sink under my
torments. Latterly, however, when colder and more inclement weather came
on, and when, from the length of my sufferings, I had begun to sink into
a more languishing condition, it was no doubt fortunate for me that the
same person to whose breakfast-table I had access, allowed me to sleep in
a large unoccupied house of which he was tenant. Unoccupied I call it,
for there was no household or establishment in it; nor any furniture,
indeed, except a table and a few chairs. But I found, on taking
possession of my new quarters, that the house already contained one
single inmate, a poor friendless child, apparently ten years old; but she
seemed hunger-bitten, and sufferings of that sort often make children
look older than they are. From this forlorn child I learned that she had
slept and lived there alone for some time before I came; and great joy
the poor creature expressed when she found that I was in future to be her
companion through the hours of darkness. The house was large, and, from
the want of furniture, the noise of the rats made a prodigious echoing on
the spacious staircase and hall; and amidst the real fleshly ills of cold
and, I fear, hunger, the forsaken child had found leisure to suffer still
more (it appeared) from the self-created one of ghosts.
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