king
down into the court, which was just below me. Not a human being was
in sight; and neither were the dogs. I found a flight of steps in the
thickness of the wall and went down them; and when I emerged again into
the court, there stood the circle of dogs, the golden-brown one a little
ahead of the others, the black greyhound shivering in the rear.

"Oh, hang it--you uncomfortable beasts, you!" I exclaimed, my voice
startling me with a sudden echo. The dogs stood motionless, watching me.
I knew by this time that they would not try to prevent my approaching
the house, and the knowledge left me free to examine them. I had a
feeling that they must be horribly cowed to be so silent and inert. Yet
they did not look hungry or ill-treated. Their coats were smooth and
they were not thin, except the shivering greyhound. It was more as if
they had lived a long time with people who never spoke to them or looked
at them: as though the silence of the place had gradually benumbed their
busy inquisitive natures. And this strange passivity, this almost human
lassitude, seemed to me sadder than the misery of starved and beaten
animals. I should have liked to rouse them for a minute, to coax them
into a game or a scamper; but the longer I looked into their fixed and
weary eyes the more preposterous the idea became. With the windows of
that house looking down on us, how could I have imagined such a thing?
The dogs knew better: THEY knew what the house would tolerate and what
it would not. I even fancied that they knew what was passing through
my mind, and pitied me for my frivolity. But even that feeling probably
reached them through a thick fog of listlessness. I had an idea that
their distance from me was as nothing to my remoteness from them. In the
last analysis, the impression they produced was that of having in common
one memory so deep and dark that nothing that had happened since was
worth either a growl or a wag.

"I say," I broke out abruptly, addressing myself to the dumb circle, "do
you know what you look like, the whole lot of you? You look as if you'd
seen a ghost--that's how you look! I wonder if there IS a ghost here,
and nobody but you left for it to appear to?" The dogs continued to gaze
at me without moving...

It was dark when I saw Lanrivain's motor lamps at the cross-roads--and I
wasn't exactly sorry to see them. I had the sense of having escaped from
the loneliest place in the whole world, and of not liking lon