"One moment," I said; "this is all very pretty, but how am I to know
you're not sending me to bed while you fetch in all the countryside to
lay me by the heels?"

"I'm afraid," was his answer, "you must be content with my word, as
a gentleman, that never, to-night or hereafter, will I breathe a
syllable about the circumstances of your visit. However, if you
choose, we will return upstairs."

"No; I'll trust you," said I; and he opened the door.

It led into a broad passage, paved with slate, upon which three or
four rooms opened. He paused by the second, and ushered me into a
sleeping-chamber which, though narrow, was comfortable enough--a vast
improvement, at any rate, on the mumper's lodgings I had been used to
for many months past.

"You can undress here," he said. "The sheets are aired, and if you'll
wait a moment I'll fetch a nightshirt--one of my own."

"Sir, you heap coals of fire on me."

"Believe me that for ninety-nine of your qualities I do not care a
tinker's curse: but as a man who, after three tumblers of neat brandy,
can tell Marsala from Madeira you are to be taken care of."

He shuffled away, but came back in a couple of minutes with the
nightshirt.

"Good-night," he called to me, flinging it in at the door; and without
giving me time to return the wish, went his way upstairs.

Now it might be supposed that I was only too glad to toss off my
clothes and climb into the bed I had so unexpectedly acquired a right
to. But, as a matter of fact, I did nothing of the kind. Instead, I
drew on my boots and sat on the bed's edge, blinking at my candle till
it died down in its socket, and afterwards at the purple square of
window as it slowly changed to gray with the coming of dawn. I was
cold to the heart, and my teeth chattered with an ague. Certainly I
never suspected my host's word; but was even occupied in framing good
resolutions and shaping out an excellent future, when I heard the
front door gently pulled to, and a man's footsteps moving quietly to
the gate.

The treachery knocked me in a heap for the moment. Then leaping up and
flinging my door wide, I stumbled through the uncertain light of the
passage into the front hall.

There was a fan-shaped light over the door, and the place was very
still and gray. A quick thought, or rather a sudden prophetic guess at
the truth, made me turn to the figure of the mastiff curled under the
hall table.

I laid my hand on the scruff of his neck. He