Some of these
rooms contained their time-honored furniture, all in the best possible
repair, heavy, dark, polished; beds that had been marriage beds and dying
beds over and over again; chairs with carved backs; and all manner of old
world curiosities; family pictures, and samplers, and embroidery;
fragments of tapestry; an inlaid floor; everything having a story to it,
though, to say the truth, the possessor of these curiosities made but a
bungling piece of work in telling the legends connected with them. In one
or two instances Hammond corrected him.
By and by they came to what had once been the principal bed-room of the
house; though its gloom, and some circumstances of family misfortune that
had happened long ago, had caused it to fall into disrepute in latter
times; and it was now called the Haunted Chamber, or the Ghost's Chamber.
The furniture of this room, however, was particularly rich in its antique
magnificence; and one of the principal objects was a great black cabinet
of ebony and ivory, such as may often be seen in old English houses, and
perhaps often in the palaces of Italy, in which country they perhaps
originated. This present cabinet was known to have been in the house as
long ago as the reign of Queen Elizabeth, and how much longer neither
tradition nor record told. Hammond particularly directed Middleton's
attention to it.
"There is nothing in this house," said he, "better worth your attention
than that cabinet.
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