It was built against a
neighboring house in such a fashion that the side with only one window
in each story, gave upon the street, and the front looked out upon a
yard where rose-bushes and buckhorn were growing along the wall on
either side. On the farther side, opposite the house, stood a shed, a
roof over two brick arches. A little wicket-gate gave entrance into
the gloomy place (made gloomier still by the great walnut-tree
which grew in the yard), but a double flight of steps, with an
elaborately-wrought but rust-eaten handrail, led to the house door.
Inside the house there were two rooms on each floor. The dining-room
occupied that part of the ground floor nearest the street, and the
kitchen lay on the other side of a narrow passage almost wholly taken
up by the wooden staircase. Of the two first-floor rooms, one did duty
as the magistrate's study, the other as a bedroom, while the nursery
and the servants' bedroom stood above in the attics. There were no
ceilings in the house; the cross-beams were simply white-washed and the
spaces plastered over. Both rooms on the first floor and the dining-room
below were wainscoted and adorned with the labyrinthine designs which
taxed the patience of the eighteenth century joiner; but the carving
had been painted a dingy gray most depressing to behold.
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