uch higher into the sky than usual, and their gables
and quaint old towers lay far away in its purple reaches.

The cathedral appeared unreal in a silver mist. He moved softly, keeping
to the shadows; but the streets were all deserted and very silent; the
doors were closed, the shutters fastened. Not a soul was astir. The hush
of night lay over everything; it was like a town of the dead, a
churchyard with gigantic and grotesque tombstones.

Wondering where all the busy life of the day had so utterly disappeared
to, he made his way to a back door that entered the inn by means of the
stables, thinking thus to reach his room unobserved. He reached the
courtyard safely and crossed it by keeping close to the shadow of the
wall. He sidled down it, mincing along on tiptoe, just as the old men
did when they entered the _salle a manger_. He was horrified to find
himself doing this instinctively. A strange impulse came to him,
catching him somehow in the centre of his body--an impulse to drop upon
all fours and run swiftly and silently. He glanced upwards and the idea
came to him to leap up upon his window-sill overhead instead of going
round by the stairs. This occurred to him as the easiest, and most
natural way. It was like the beginning of some horrible transformation
of himself into something else. He was fearfully strung up.

The moon was higher now, and the shadows very dark along the side of the
street where he moved. He kept among the deepest of them, and reached
the porch with the glass doors.

But here there was light; the inmates, unfortunately, were still about.
Hoping to slip across the hall unobserved and reach the stairs, he
opened the door carefully and stole in. Then he saw that the hall was
not empty. A large dark thing lay against the wall on his left. At first
he thought it must be household articles. Then it moved, and he thought
it was an immense cat, distorted in some way by the play of light and
shadow. Then it rose straight up before him and he saw that it was the
proprietress.

What she had been doing in this position he could only venture a
dreadful guess, but the moment she stood up and faced him he was aware
of some terrible dignity clothing her about that instantly recalled the
girl's strange saying that she was a queen. Huge and sinister she stood
there under the little oil lamp; alone with him in the empty hall. Awe
stirred in his heart, and the roots of some ancient fear. He felt that
he mus