moving my hands across
the door. 'For God's sake open and let me in. I am hurt, and dying of
cold.'

'What brings you here?' the voice asked sharply. Despite its tartness, I
fancied that it was a woman's.

'Heaven knows!' I answered desperately. 'I cannot tell. They maltreated
me at the inn, and threw me into the street. I crawled away, and have
been wandering in the wood for hours. Then I saw a light here.'

On that some muttering took place on the other side of the door--to
which I had my ear. It ended in the bars being lowered. The door swung
partly open, and a light shone out, dazzling me. I tried to shade my
eyes with my fingers, and, as did so, fancied I heard a murmur of pity.
But when I looked in under screen of my hand, I saw only one person--the
man who held the light, and his aspect was so strange, so terrifying,
that, shaken as I was by fatigue, I recoiled a step.

He was a tall and very thin man, meanly dressed in a short, scanty
jacket and well-darned hose. Unable, for some reason, to bend his neck,
he carried his head with a strange stiffness.

And that head--never did living man show a face so like death. His
forehead was bald and yellow, his cheek-bones stood out under the
strained skin, all the lower part of his face fell in, his jaws receded,
his cheeks were hollow, his lips and chin were thin and fleshless. He
seemed to have only one expression--a fixed grin.

While I stood looking at this formidable creature, he made a quick
movement to shut the door again, smiling more widely. I had the presence
of mind to thrust in my foot, and, before he could resent the act, a
voice in the background cried,--

'For shame, Clon! Stand back, stand back! do you hear? I am afraid,
Monsieur, that you are hurt.'

Those words were my welcome to that house; and, spoken at an hour and in
circumstances so gloomy, they made a lasting impression. Round the
hall ran a gallery, and this, the height of the apartment, and the dark
panelling seemed to swallow up the light. I stood within the entrance
(as it seemed to me) of a huge cave; the skull-headed porter had the air
of an ogre. Only the voice which greeted me dispelled the illusion. I
turned trembling towards the quarter whence it came, and, shading my
eyes, made out a woman's form standing in a doorway under the gallery. A
second figure, which I took to be that of the servant I had seen at the
inn, loomed uncertainly beside her.

I bowed in silence. My teeth we