"There she is safe!" Magdalen heard him say, in
regretful soliloquy. "As fine a girl as ever I sat eyes on. What a pity!
what a pity!"
The last sounds of his voice died out in the distance; and she was left
alone in her room.
Holding fast by the banister, old Mazey made his way down to the
corridor on the second floor, in which a night light was always burning.
He advanced to the truckle-bed, and, steadying himself against the
opposite wall, looked at it attentively. Prolonged contemplation of his
own resting-place for the night apparently failed to satisfy him.
He shook his head ominously, and, taking from the side-pocket of his
great-coat a pair of old patched slippers, surveyed them with an aspect
of illimitable doubt. "I'm all abroad to-night," he mumbled to himself.
"Troubled in my mind--that's what it is--troubled in my mind."
The old patched slippers and the veteran's existing perplexities
happened to be intimately associated one with the other, in the relation
of cause and effect. The slippers belonged to the admiral, who had taken
one of his unreasonable fancies to this particular pair, and who still
persisted in wearing them long after they were unfit for his service.
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