Good-night, good sleep, good rest from sorrow To these that shall not have good morrow.
—Swinburne.
At first when Sir John Ayloffe threw open the door of the public room, Stowmaries was only conscious of an almost Satanic din; he certainly could see nothing through the dense cloud of smoke which filled every corner of the long, narrow hall.
 
Gradually, however, his eyes, still dimmed from recent libations and acute excitement, became accustomed to this haze-covered gloom, whilst his ears distinguished isolated sounds, drunken songs, loud oaths or hoarse laughter from out the deafening roar which surged towards him like the noise of breakers against a rock.
 
A narrow deal table ran from end to end of the room, from the main door at the top to the small latticed window at the bottom. The floor was strewn with rushes on which sprawled recumbent figures in various stages of drunken sleep, in the very midst of a litter of debris, broken glasses, overthrown mugs, patches of spilt wine or ale, bones and remnants of pastry and of bread—all evil-smelling and unspeakably dirty. On the table itself the remnants of pies and cooked meats, and a forest of empty mugs and bottles. One by one the tallow candles which had been placed at intervals throughout the whole length of the table had thrown up their last flicker of feeble light, had[92] spluttered their last with a hissing sound and finally died out in a column of grimy smoke.
 
There were but some half dozen or so left now, which threw uncertain yellow gleams through the thick veil of tobacco fumes, on the prostrate figures that sprawled across the table, on overthrown goblets and jugs, on all the unsavoury debris—remnants of the past orgy.
 
The rest of the room was in darkness, and through the gloom the figure of a young man, with flushed face and dark brown hair innocent of perruque, moved backwards and forwards to the rhythmic cadence of a boisterous chorus of song.
 
The draught from the badly-fastened window wafted the strips of cotton which hung in lieu of curtains, straight into the room, with a swishing, moaning sound around which—soft though it was—could be heard like a long drawn-out sigh of pain, in the pauses of lusty laughter and of ribald song.
 
The storm outside seemed to have ceased, for, as the curtains blew away from the window the pale, ghost-like streaks of moonbeams searched the darkness of that end of the room and found here a fold of satin tattered and frayed, there a broken paste buckle, or rusty sword hilt on which to play its weird gamut of faint and ghoulish rays.
 
The noise was incessant, merriment mixed with quarrelsome oaths, lively songs alternating with hoarse shouts. All those who were not snoring babbled incoherently, swore or sang; Irish brogue mingling with broad Yorkshire tones, round Scotch oaths striking against Gaelic ones, whilst from time to time, a noisome word loudly flung from end to end of the table like a filthy rag would rouse one of the[93] sleepers and spur him to respond to the challenge with vile blasphemy.
 
At times the clink of a sword would cut sharply through the buzzing air, the beginnings of a quarrel, a volley of vituperations, a pewter mug or half-empt............