shoulder ran a line of
pegs, on which hung half-a-dozen hats and great-coats, every one of
clerical shape; and full in front of me a broad staircase ran up, with a
staring Brussels carpet, the colours and pattern of which I can recall
as well as I can to-day's breakfast. Under this staircase was set a
stand full of walking-sticks, and a table littered with gloves, brushes,
a hand-bell, a riding-crop, one or two dog-whistles, and a bedroom
candle, with tinder-box beside it. This, with one notable exception,
was all the furniture.

The exception--which turned me cold--was the form of a yellow mastiff
dog, curled on a mat beneath the table. The arch of his back was
towards me, and one forepaw lay over his nose in a natural posture of
sleep. I leant back on the wainscotting with my eyes tightly fixed on
him, and my thoughts sneaking back, with something of regret, to the
storm I had come through.

But a man's habits are not easily denied. At the end of three minutes
the dog had not moved, and I was down on the door-mat unlacing my soaked
boots. Slipping them off, and taking them in my left hand, I stood up,
and tried a step towards the stairs, with eyes alert for any movement of
the mastiff; but he never stirred. I was glad enough, however, on
reaching the stairs, to find them newly built, and the carpet thick. Up
I went, with a glance at every step for the table which now hid the
brute's form from me, and never a creak did I wake out of that staircase
till I was almost at the first landing, when my toe caught a loose
stair-rod, and rattled it in a way that stopped my heart for a moment,
and then set it going in double-quick time.

I stood still with a hand on the rail. My eyes were now on a level with
the floor of the landing, out of which branched two passages--one
turning sharply to my right, the other straight in front, so that I was
gazing down the length of it. Almost at the end, a parallelogram of
light fell across it from an open door.

A man who has once felt it knows there is only one kind of silence that
can fitly be called "dead." This is only to be found in a great house
at midnight. I declare that for a few seconds after I rattled the
stair-rod you might have cut the silence with a knife. If the house
held a clock, it ticked inaudibly.

Upon this silence, at the end of a minute, broke a light sound--the
_tink-tink_ of a decanter on the rim of a wine-glass. It came from the
room where the li