The dog-cart, with Mr. Thomas Idle and his ankle on the hanging seat behind, Mr. Francis Goodchild and the Innkeeper in front, and the rain in spouts and splashes everywhere, made the best of its way back to the little inn; the broken moor country looking like miles upon miles of Pre-Adamite sop, or the ruins of some enormous jorum of antediluvian toast-and-water.  The trees dripped; the eaves of the scattered cottages dripped; the barren stone walls dividing the land, dripped; the yelping dogs dripped; carts and waggons under ill-roofed penthouses, dripped; melancholy cocks and hens perching on their shafts, or seeking shelter underneath them, dripped; Mr. Goodchild dripped; Thomas Idle dripped; the Inn-keeper dripped; the mare dripped; the vast curtains of mist and cloud passed before the shadowy forms of the hills, streamed water as they were drawn across the landscape.  Down such steep pitches that the mare seemed to be trotting on her head, and up such steep pitches that she seemed to have a supplementary leg in her tail, the dog-cart jolted and tilted back to the village.  It was too wet for the women to look out, it was too wet even for the children to look out; all the doors and windows were closed, and the only sign of life or motion was in the rain-punctured puddles.

Whiskey and oil to Thomas Idle’s ankle, and whiskey without oil to Francis Goodchild’s stomach, produced an agreeable change in the systems of both; soothing Mr. Idle’s pain, which was sharp before, and sweetening Mr. Goodchild’s temper, which was sweet before.  Portmanteaus being then opened and clothes changed, Mr. Goodchild, through having no change of outer garments but broadcloth and velvet, suddenly became a magnificent portent in the Innkeeper’s house, a shining frontispiece to the fashions for the month, and a frightful anomaly in the Cumberland village.

Greatly ashamed of his splendid appearance, the conscious Goodchild quenched it as much as possible, in the shadow of Thomas Idle’s ankle, and in a corner of the little covered carriage that started with them for Wigton—a most desirable carriage for any country, except for its having a flat roof and no sides; which caused the plumps of rain accumulating on the roof to play vigorous games of bagatelle into the interior all the way, and to score immensely.  It was comfortable to see how the people coming back in open carts from Wigton market made no more of the rain than if it were sunshine; how the Wigton policeman taking a country walk of half-a-dozen miles (apparently for pleasure), in resplendent uniform, accepted saturation as his normal state; how clerks and schoolmasters in black, loitered along the road without umbrellas, getting varnished at every step; how the Cumberland girls, coming out to look after the Cumberland cows, shook the rain from their eyelashes and laughed it away; and how the rain continued to fall upon all, as it only does fall in hill countries.

Wigton market was over, and its bare booths were smoking with rain all down the street.  Mr. Thomas Idle, melodramatically carried to the inn’s first floor, and laid upon three chairs (he should have had the sofa, if there had been one), Mr. Goodchild went to the window to take an observation of Wigton, and report what he saw to his disabled companion.

‘Brother Francis, brother Francis,’ cried Thomas Idle, ‘What do you see from the turret?’

‘I see,’ said Brother Francis, ‘what I hope and believe to be one of the most dismal places ever seen by eyes.  I see the houses with their roofs of dull black, their stained fronts, and their dark-rimmed windows, looking as if they were all in mourning.  As every little puff of wind comes down the street, I see a perfect train of rain let off along the wooden stalls in the market-place and exploded against me.  I see a very big gas lamp in the centre which I know, by a secret instinct, will not be lighted to-night.  I see a pump, with a trivet underneath its spout whereon to stand the vessels that are brought to be filled with water.  I see a man come to pump, and he pumps very hard, but no water follows, and he strolls empty away.’

‘Brother Francis, brother Francis,’ cried Thomas Idle, ‘what more do you see from the turret, besides the man and the pump, and the trivet and the houses all in mourning and the rain?’

‘I see,’ said Brother Francis, ‘one, two, three, four, five, linen-drapers’ shops in front of me.  I see a linen-draper’s shop next door to the right—and there are five more linen-drapers’ shops down the corner to the left.  Eleven homicidal linen-drapers’ shops within a short stone’s throw, each with its hands at the throats of all the rest!  Over the small first-floor of one of these linen-drapers’ shops appears the wonderful inscription, Bank.’

‘Brother Francis, brother Francis,’ cried Thomas Idle, ‘what more do you see from the turret, besides the eleven homicidal linen-drapers’ shops, and the wonderful inscription, “Bank,”—on the small first-floor, and the man and the pump and the trivet and the houses all in mourning and the rain?’

‘I see,’ said Brother Francis, ‘the depository for Christian Knowledge, and through the dark vapour I think I again make out Mr. Spurgeon looming heavily.  Her Majesty the Queen, God bless her, printed in colours, I am sure I see.  I see the Illustrated London News of several years ago, and I see a sweetmeat shop—which the proprietor calls a “Salt Warehouse”—with one small female child in a cotton bonnet looking in on tip-toe, oblivious of rain.  And I see a watchmaker’s with only three great pale watches of a dull metal hanging in his window, each in a separate pane.’

‘Brother Francis, brother Francis,’ cried Thomas Idle, ‘what more do you see of Wigton, besides these objects, and the man and the pump and the trivet and the houses all in mourning and the rain?’

‘I see nothing more,’ said Brother Francis, ‘and there is nothing more to see, except the curlpaper bill of the theatre, which was opened and shut last week (the manager’s family played all the parts), and the short, square, chinky omnibus that goes to the railway, and leads too rattling a life over the stones to hold together long.  O yes!  Now, I see two men with their hands in their pockets and their backs towards me.’

‘Brother Francis, brother Francis,’ cried Thomas Idle, ‘what do you make out from the turret, of the expression of the two men with their hands in their pockets and their backs towards you?’

‘They are mysterious men,’ said Brother Francis, ‘with inscrutable backs.  They keep their backs towards me with persistency.  If one turns an inch in any direction, the other turns an inch in the same direction, and no more.  They turn very stiffly, on a very little pivot, in the middle of the market-place.  Their appearance is partly of a mining, partly of a ploughing, partly of a stable, character.  They are looking at nothing—very hard.  Their backs are slouched, and their legs are curved with much standing about.  Their pockets are loose and dog’s-eared, on account of their hands being always in them.  They stand to be rained upon, without any movement of impatience or dissatisfaction, and they keep so close together that an elbow of each jostles an elbow of the other, but they never speak.  They spit at times, but speak not.  I see it growing darker and darker, and still I see them, sole visible population of the place, standing to be rained upon with their backs towards me, and looking at nothing very hard.’

‘Brother Francis, brother Francis,’ cried Thomas Idle, ‘before you draw down the blind of the turret and come in to have your head scorched by the hot gas, see if you can, and impart to me, something of the expression of those two amazing men.’

‘The murky shadows,’ said Francis Goodchild, ‘are gathering fast; and the wings of evening, and the wings of coal, are folding over Wigton.  Still, they look at nothing very hard, with their backs towards me.  Ah!  Now, they turn, and I see—’

‘Brother Francis, brother Francis,’ cried Thomas Idle, ‘tell me quickly what you see of the two men of Wigton!’

‘I see,’ said Francis Goodchild, ‘that they have no expression at all.  And now the town goes to sleep, undazzled by the large unlighted lamp in the market-place; and let no man wake it.’

At the close of the next day’s journey, Mr. Thomas Idle’s ankle became much swollen and inflamed.  There are reasons which will presently explain themselves for not publicly indicating the exact direction in which that journey lay, or the place in which it ended.  It was a long day’s shaking of Thomas Idle over the rough roads, and a long day’s getting out and going on before the horses, and fagging up hills, and scouring down hills, on the part of Mr. Goodchild, who in the fatigues of such labours congratulated himself on attaining a high point of idleness.  It was at a little town, still in Cumberland, that they halted for the night—a very little town, with the purple and brown moor close upon its one street; a curious little ancient market-cross set up in the midst of it; and the town itself looking much as if it were a collection of great stones piled on end by the Druids long ago, which a few recluse people had since hollowed out for habitations.

‘Is there a doctor here?’ asked Mr. Goodchild, on his knee, of the motherly landlady of the little Inn: stopping in his examination of Mr. Idle’s ankle, with the aid of a candle.

‘Ey, my word!’ said the landlady, glancing doubtfully at the ankle for herself; ‘there’s Doctor Speddie.’

‘Is he a good Doctor?’

‘Ey!’ said the landlady, ‘I ca’ him so.  A’ cooms efther nae doctor that I ken.  Mair nor which, a’s just THE doctor heer.’

‘Do you think he is at home?’

Her reply was, ‘Gang awa’, Jock, and bring him.’

Jock, a white-headed boy, who, under pretence of stirring up some bay salt in a basin of water for the laving of this unfortunate ankle, had greatly enjoyed himself for the last ten minutes in splashing the carpet, set off promptly.  A very few minutes had elapsed when he showed the Doctor in, by tumbling against the door before him and bursting it open with his head.

‘Gently, Jock, gently,’ said the Doctor as he advanced with a quiet step.  ‘Gentlemen, a good evening.  I am sorry that my presence is required here.  A slight accident, I hope?  A slip and a fall?  Yes, yes, yes.  Carrock, indeed?  Hah!  Does that pain you, sir?  No doubt, it does.  It is the great connecting ligament here, you see, that has been badly strained.  Time and rest, sir!  They are often the recipe in greater cases,’ with a slight sigh, ‘and often the recipe in small.  I can send a lotion to relieve you, but we must leave the cure to time and rest.’

This he said, holding Idle’s foot on his knee between his two hands, as he sat over against him.  He had touched it tenderly and skilfully in explanation of what he said, and, when his careful examination was completed, softly returned it to its former horizontal position on a chair.

He spoke with a little irresolution whenever he began, but afterwards fluently.  He was a tall, thin, large-boned, old gentleman, with an appearance at first sight of being hard-featured; but, at a second glance, the mild expression of his face and some particular touches of sweetness and patience about his mouth, corrected this impression and assigned his long professional rides, by day and night, in the bleak hill-weather, as the true cause of that appearance.  He stooped very little, though past seventy and very grey.  His dress was more like that of a clergyman than a country doctor, being a plain black suit, and a plain white neck-kerchief tied behind like a band.  His black was the worse for wear, and there were darns in his coat, and his linen was a little frayed at the hems and edges.  He might have been poor—it was likely enough in that out-of-the-way spot—or he might have been a little self-forgetful and eccentric.  Any one could have seen directly, that he had neither wife nor child at home.  He had a scholarly air with him, and that kind of considerate humanity towards others which claimed a gentle consideration for himself.  Mr. Goodchild made this study of him while he was examining the limb, and as he laid it down.  Mr. Goodchild wishes to add that he considers it a very good likeness.

It came out in the course of a little conversation, that Doctor Speddie was acquainted with some friends of Thomas Idle’s, and had, when a young man, passed some years in Thomas Idle’s birthplace on the other side of England.  Certain idle labours, the fruit of Mr. Goodchild’s apprenticeship, also happened to be well known to him.  The lazy travellers were thus placed on a more intimate footing with the Doctor than the casual circumstances of the meeting would of themselves have established; and when Doctor Speddie rose to go home, remarking that he would send his assistant with the lotion, Francis Goodchild said that was unnecessary, for, by the Doctor’s leave, he would accompany him, and bring it back.  (Having done nothing to fatigue himself for a full quarter of an hour, Francis began to fear that he was not in a state of idleness.)

Doctor Speddie politely assented to the proposition of Francis Goodchild, ‘as it would give him the pleasure of enjoying a few more minutes of Mr. Goodchild’s society than he could otherwise have hoped for,’ and they went out together into the village street.  The rain had nearly ceased, the clouds had broken before a cool wind from the north-east, and stars were shining from the peaceful heights beyond them.

Doctor Speddie’s house was the last house in the place.  Beyond it, lay the moor, all dark and lonesome.  The wind moaned in a low, dull, shivering manner round the little garden, like a houseless creature that knew the winter was coming.  It was exceedingly wild and solitary.  ‘Roses,’ said the Doctor, when Goodchild touched some wet leaves overhanging the stone porch; ‘but they get cut to pieces.’

The Doctor opened the door with a key he carried, and led the way into a low but pretty ample hall with rooms on either side.  The door of one of these stood open, and the Doctor entered it, with a word of welcome to his guest.  It, too, was a low room, half surgery and half parlour, with shelves of books and bottles against the walls, which were of a very dark hue.  There was a fire in the grate, the night being damp and chill.  Leaning against the chimney-piece looking down into it, stood the Doctor’s Assistant.

A man of a most remarkable appearance.  Much older than Mr. Goodchild had expected, for he was at least two-and-fifty; but, that was nothing.  What was startling in him was his remarkable paleness.  His large black eyes, his sunken cheeks, his long and heavy iron-grey hair, his wasted hands, and even the attenuation of his figure, were at first forgotten in his extraordinary pallor.  There was no vestige of colour in the man.  When he turned his face, Francis Goodchild started as if a stone figure had looked round at him.

‘Mr. Lorn,’ said the Doctor.  ‘Mr. Goodchild.’

The Assistant, in a distraught way—as if he had forgotten something—as if he had forgotten everything, even to his own name and himself—acknowledged the visitor’s presence, and stepped further back into the shadow of the wall behind him.  But, he was so pale that his face stood out in relief again the dark wall, and really could not be hidden so.

‘Mr. Goodchild’s friend has met with accident, Lorn,’ said Doctor Speddie.  ‘We want the lotion for a bad sprain.’

A pause.

‘My dear fellow, you are more than usually absent to-night.  The lotion for a bad sprain.’

‘Ah! yes!  Directly.’

He was evidently relieved to turn away, and to take his white face and his wild eyes to a table in a recess among the bottles.  But, though he stood there, compounding the lotion with his back towards them, Goodchild could not, for many moments, withdraw his gaze from the man.  When he at length did so, he found the Doctor observing him, with some trouble in his face.  ‘He is absent,’ explained the Doctor, in a low voice.  ‘Always absent.  Very absent.’

‘Is he ill?’

‘No, not ill.’

‘Unhappy?’

‘I have my suspicions that he was,’ assented the Doctor, ‘once.’

Francis Goodchild could not but observe that the Doctor accompanied these words with a benignant and protecting glance at their subject, in which there was much of the expression with which an attached father might have looked at a heavily afflicted son.  Yet, that they were not father and son must have been plain to most eyes.  The Assistant, on the other hand, turning presently to ask the Doctor some question, looked at him with a wan smile as if he were his whole reliance and sustainment in life.

It was in vain for the Doctor in his easy-chair, to try to lead the mind of Mr. Goodchild in the opposite easy-chair, away from what was before him.  Let Mr. Goodchild do what he would to follow the Doctor, his eyes and thoughts reverted to the Assistant.  The Doctor soon perceived it, and, after falling silent, and musing in a little perplexity, said:

‘Lorn!’

‘My dear Doctor.’

‘Would you go to the Inn, and apply that lotion?  You will show the best way of applying it, far better than Mr. Goodchild can.’

‘With pleasure.’

The Assistant took his hat, and passed like a shadow to the door.

‘Lorn!’ said the Doctor, calling after him.

He returned.

‘Mr. Goodchild will keep me company till you come home.  Don’t hurry.  Excuse my calling you back.’

‘It is not,’ said the Assistant, with his former smile, ‘the first time you have called me back, dear Doctor.’  With those words he went away.

‘Mr. Goodchild,’ said Doctor Speddie, in a low voice, and with his former troubled expression of face, ‘I have seen that your attention has been concentrated on my friend.’

‘He fascinates me.  I must apologise to you, but he has quite bewildered and mastered me.’

‘I find that a lonely existence and a long secret,’ said the Doctor, drawing his chair a little nearer to Mr. Goodchild’s, ‘become in the course of time very heavy.  I will tell you something.  You may make what use you will of it, under fictitious names.  I know I may trust you.  I am the more inclined to confidence to-night, through having been unexpectedly led back, by the current of our conversation at the Inn, to scenes in my early life.  Will you please to draw a little nearer?’

Mr. Goodchild drew a little nearer, and the Doctor went on thus: speaking, for the most part, in so cautious a voice, that the wind, though it was far from high, occasionally got the better of him.

When this present nineteenth century was younger by a good many years than it is now, a certain friend of mine, named Arthur Holliday, happened to arrive in the town of Doncaster, exactly in the middle of a race-week, or, in other words, in the middle of the month of September.  He was one of those reckless, rattle-pated, open-hearted, and open-mouthed young gentlemen, who possess the gift of familiarity in its highest perfection, and who scramble carelessly along the journey of life making friends, as the phrase is, wherever they go.  His father was a rich manufacturer, and had bought landed property enough in one of the midland counties to make all the born squires in his neighbourhood thoroughly envious of him.  Arthur was his only son, possessor in prospect of the great estate and the great business after his father’s death; well supplied with money, and not too rigidly looked after, during his father’s lifetime.  Report, or scandal, whichever you please, said that the old gentleman had been rather wild in his youthful days, and that, unlike most parents, he was not disposed to be violently indignant when he found that his son took after him.  This may be true or not.  I myself only knew the elder Mr. Holliday when he was getting on in years; and then he was as quiet and as respectable a gentleman as ever I met with.

Well, one September, as I told you, young Arthur comes to Doncaster, having decided all of a sudden, in his harebrained way, that he would go to the races.  He did not reach the town till towards the close of the evening, and he went at once to see about his dinner and bed at the principal hotel.  Dinner they were ready enough to give him; but as for a bed, they laughed when he mentioned it.  In the race-week at Doncaster, it is no uncommon thing for visitors who have not bespoken apartments, to pass the night in their carriages at the inn doors.  As for the lower sort of strangers, I myself have often seen them, at that full time, sleeping out on the doorsteps for want of a covered place to creep under.  Rich as he was, Arthur’s chance of getting a night’s lodging (seeing that he had not written beforehand to secure one) was more than doubtful.  He tried the second hotel, and the third hotel, and two of the inferior inns after that; and was met everywhere by the same form of answer.  No accommodation for the night of any sort was left.  All the bright golden sovereigns in his pocket would not buy him a bed at Doncaster in the race-week.

To a young fellow of Arthur’s temperament, the novelty of being turned away into the street, like a penniless vagabond, at every house where he asked for a lodging, presented itself in the light of a new and highly amusing piece of experience.  He went on, with his carpet-bag in his hand, applying for a bed at every place of entertainment for travellers that he could find in Doncaster, until he wandered into the outskirts of the town.  By this time, the last glimmer of twilight had faded out, the moon was rising dimly in a mist, the wind was getting cold, the clouds were gathering heavily, and there was every prospect that it was soon going to rain.

The look of the night had rather a lowering effect on young Holliday’s good spirits.  He began to contemplate the houseless situation in which he was placed, from the serious rather than the humorous point of view; and he looked about him, for another public-house to inquire at, with something very like downright anxiety in his mind on the subject of a lodging for the night.  The suburban part of the town towards which he had now strayed was hardly lighted at all, and he could see nothing of the houses as he passed them, except that they got progressively smaller and dirtier, the farther he went.  Down the winding road before him shone the dull gleam of an oil lamp, the one faint, lonely light that struggled ineffectually with the foggy darkness all round him.  He resolved to go on as far as this lamp, and then, if it showed him nothing in the shape of an Inn, to return to the central part of the town and to try if he could not at least secure a chair to sit down on, through the night, at one of the principal Hotels.

As he got near the lamp, he heard voices; and, walking close under it, found that it lighted the entrance to a narrow court, on the wall of which was painted a long hand in faded flesh-colour, pointing with a lean forefinger, to this inscription:—

    THE TWO ROBINS.

Arthur turned into the court without hesitation, to see what The Two Robins could do for him.  Four or five men were standing together round the door of the house which was at the bottom of the court, facing the entrance from the street.  The men were all listening to one other man, better dressed than the rest, who was telling his audience something, in a low voice, in which they were apparently very much interested.

On entering the passage, Arthur was passed by a stranger with a knapsack in his hand, who was evidently leaving the house.

‘No,’ said the traveller with the knapsack, turning round and addressing himself cheerfully to a fat, sly-looking, bald-headed man, with a dirty white apron on, who had followed him down the passage.  ‘No, Mr. landlord, I am not easily scared by trifles; but, I don’t mind confessing that I can’t quite stand that.’

It occurred to young Holliday, the moment he heard these words, that the stranger had been asked an exorbitant price for a bed at The Two Robins; and that he was unable or unwilling to pay it.  The moment his back was turned, Arthur, comfortably conscious of his own well-filled pockets, addressed himself in a great hurry, for fear any other benighted traveller should slip in and forestall him, to the sly-looking landlord with the dirty apron and the bald head.

‘If you have got a bed to let,’ he said, ‘and if that gentleman who has just gone out won’t pay your price for it, I will.’

The sly landlord looked hard at Arthur.

‘Will you, sir?’ he asked, in a meditative, doubtful way.

‘Name your price,’ said young Holliday, thinking that the landlord’s hesitation sprang from some boorish distrust of him.  ‘Name your price, and I’ll give you the money at once if you like?’

‘Are you game for five shillings?’ inquired the landlord, rubbing his stubbly double chin, and looking up thoughtfully at the ceiling above him.

Arthur nearly laughed in the man’s face; but thinking it prudent to control himself, offered the five shillings as seriously as he could.  The sly landlord held out his hand, then suddenly drew it back again.

‘You’re acting all fair and above-board by me,’ he said: ‘and, before I take your money, I’ll do the same by you.  Look here, this is how it stands.  You can have a bed all to yourself for five shillings; but you can’t have more than a half-share of the room it stands in.  Do you see what I mean, young gentleman?’

‘Of course I do,’ returned Arthur, a little irritably.  ‘You mean that it is a double-bedded room, and that one of the beds is occupied?’

The landlord nodded his head, and rubbed his double chin harder than ever.  Arthur hesitated, and mechanically moved back a step or two towards the door.  The idea of sleeping in the same room with a total stranger, did not present an attractive prospect to him.  He felt more than half inclined to drop his five shillings into his pocket, and to go out into the street once more.

‘Is it yes, or no?’ asked the landlord.  ‘Settle it as quick as you can, because there’s lots of people wanting a bed at Doncaster to-night, besides you.’

Arthur looked towards the court, and heard the rain falling heavily in the street outside.  He thought he would ask a question or two before he rashly decided on leaving the shelter of The Two Robins.

‘What sort of a man is it who has got the other bed?’ he inquired.  ‘Is he a gentleman?  I mean, is he a quiet, well-behaved person?’

‘The quietest man I ever came across,’ said the landlord, rubbing his fat hands stealthily one over the other.  ‘As sober as a judge, and as regular as clock-work in his habits.  It hasn’t struck nine, not ten minutes ago, and he’s in his bed already.  I don’t know whether that comes up to your notion of a quiet man: it goes a long way ahead of mine, I can tell you.’

‘Is he asleep, do you think?’ asked Arthur.

‘I know he’s asleep,’ returned the landlord.  ‘And what’s more, he’s gone off so fast, that I’ll warrant you don’t wake him.  This way, sir,’ said the landlord, speaking over young Holliday’s shoulder, as if he was addressing some new guest who was approaching the house.

‘Here you are,’ said Arthur, determined to be beforehand with the stranger, whoever he might be.  ‘I’ll take the bed.’  And he handed the five shillings to the landlord, who nodded, dropped the money carelessly into his waistcoat-pocket, and lighted the candle.

‘Come up and see the room,’ said the host of The Two Robins, leading the way to the staircase quite briskly, considering how fat he was.

They mounted to the second-floor of the house.  The landlord half opened a door, fronting the landing, then stopped, and turned round to Arthur.

‘It’s a fair bargain, mind, on my side as well as on yours,’ he said.  ‘You give me five shillings, I give you in return a clean, comfortable bed; and I warrant, beforehand, that you won’t be interfered with, or annoyed in any way, by the man who sleeps in the same room as you.’  Saying those words, he looked hard, for a moment, in young Holliday’s face, and then led the way into the room.

It was larger and cleaner than Arthur had expected it would be.  The two beds stood parallel with each other—a space of about six feet intervening between them.  They were both of the same medium size, and both had the same plain white curtains, made to draw, if necessary, all round them.  The occupied bed was the bed nearest the window.  The curtains were all drawn round this, except the half curtain at the bottom, on the side of the bed farthest from the window.  Arthur saw the feet of the sleeping man raising the scanty clothes into a sharp little eminence, as if he was lying flat on his back.  He took the candle, and advanced softly to draw the curtain—stopped half-way, and listened for a moment—then turned to the landlord.

‘He’s a very quiet sleeper,’ said Arthur.

‘Yes,’ said the landlord, ‘very quiet.’

Young Holliday advanced with the candle, and looked in at the man cautiously.

‘How pale he is!’ said Arthur.

‘Yes,’ returned the landlord, ‘pale enough, isn’t he?’

Arthur looked closer at the man.  The bedclothes were drawn up to his chin, and they lay perfectly still over the region of his chest.  Surprised and vaguely startled, as he noticed this, Arthur stooped down closer over the stranger; looked at his ashy, parted lips; listened breathlessly for an instant; looked again at the strangely still face, and the motionless lips and chest; and turned round suddenly on the landlord, with his own cheeks as pale for the moment as the hollow cheeks of the man on the bed.

‘Come here,’ he whispered, under his breath.  ‘Come here, for God’s sake!  The man’s not asleep—he is dead!’

‘You have found that out sooner than I thought you would,’ said the landlord, composedly.  ‘Yes, he’s dead, sure enough.  He died at five o’clock to-day.’

‘How did he die?  Who is he?’ asked Arthur, staggered, for a moment, by the audacious coolness of the answer.

‘As to who is he,’ rejoined the landlord, ‘I know no more about him than you do.  There are his books and letters and things, all sealed up in that brown-paper parcel, for the Coroner’s inquest to open to-morrow or next day.  He’s been here a week, paying his way fairly enough, and stopping in-doors, for the most part, as if he was ailing.  My girl brought him up his tea at five to-day; and as he was pouring of it out, he fell down in a faint, or a fit, or a compound of both, for anything I know.  We could not bring him to—and I said he was dead.  And the doctor couldn’t bring him to—and the doctor said he was dead.  And there he is.  And the Coroner’s inquest’s coming as soon as it can.  And that’s as much as I know about it.’

Arthur held the candle close to the man’s lips.  The flame still burnt straight up, as steadily as before.  There was a moment of silence; and the rain pattered drearily through it against the panes of the window.

‘If you haven’t got nothing more to say to me,’ continued the landlord, ‘I suppose I may go.  You don’t expect your five shillings back, do you?  There’s the bed I promised you, clean and comfortable.  There’s the man I warranted not to disturb you, quiet in this world for ever.  If you’re frightened to stop alone with him, that’s not my look out.  I’ve kept my part of the bargain, and I mean to keep the money.  I’m not Yorkshire, myself, young gentleman; but I’ve lived long enough in these parts to have my wits sharpened; and I shouldn’t wonder if you found out the way to brighten up yours, next time you come amongst us.’  With these words, the landlord turned towards the door, and laughed to himself softly, in high satisfaction at his own sharpness.

Startled and shocked as he was, Arthur had by this time sufficiently recovered himself to feel indignant at the trick that had been played on him, and at the insolent manner in which the landlord exulted in it.

‘Don’t laugh,’ he said sharply, ‘till you are quite sure you have got the laugh against me.&nbs............