him at the
swaying shadows, the flitting sparkles, and the steady stars overhead,
until the windless cold began to touch him through his clothes on the
bare skin. Even in his bemused intelligence, wonder began to awake.

"I say, let's come on to the house," he said at last.

"Yes, let's come on to the house," repeated Alan.

And he rose at once, re-shouldered the portmanteau, and, taking the
candle in his other hand, moved forward to the Lodge. This was a long,
low building, smothered in creepers; and now, except for some chinks of
light between the dining-room shutters, it was plunged in darkness and
silence.

In the hall Alan lit another candle, gave it to John, and opened the
door of a bedroom.

"Here," said he; "go to bed. Don't mind me, John. You'll be sorry for me
when you know."

"Wait a bit," returned John; "I've got so cold with all that standing
about. Let's go into the dining-room a minute. Just one glass to warm
me, Alan."

On the table in the hall stood a glass, and a bottle with a whisky label
on a tray. It was plain the bottle had been just opened, for the cork
and corkscrew lay beside it.

"Take that," said Alan, passing John the whisky, and then with a certain
roughness pushed his friend into the bedroom, and closed the door behind
him.

John stood amazed; then he shook the bottle, and, to his further wonder,
found it partly empty. Three or four glasses were gone. Alan must have
uncorked a bottle of whisky and drunk three or four glasses one after
the other, without sitting down, for there was no chair, and that in his
own cold lobby on this freezing night! It fully explained his
eccentricities, John reflected sagely, as he mixed himself a grog. Poor
Alan! He was drunk; and what a dreadful thing was drink, and what a
slave to it poor Alan was, to drink in this unsociable, uncomfortable
fashion! The man who would drink alone, except for health's sake--as
John was now doing--was a man utterly lost. He took the grog out, and
felt hazier but warmer. It was hard work opening the portmanteau and
finding his night things; and before he was undressed, the cold had
struck home to him once more. "Well," said he; "just a drop more.
There's no sense in getting ill with all this other trouble." And
presently dreamless slumber buried him.

When John awoke it was day. The low winter sun was already high in the
heavens, but his watch had stopped, and it was impossible to tell the
hour exactly. Ten, he gu