take in all
the appointments of the place he was so hurriedly leaving.

As we met he raised his hat. This likewise struck me as peculiar, for
the deference he displayed was more marked than that usually bestowed on
strangers, while his lack of surprise at an encounter more or less
startling in such a mist, was calculated to puzzle an ordinary man like
myself. Indeed, he was so little impressed by my presence there that he
was for passing me without a word or any other hint of good-fellowship
save the bow of which I have spoken. But this did not suit me. I was
hungry, cold, and eager for creature comforts, and the house before me
gave forth, not only heat, but a savoury odour which in itself was an
invitation hard to ignore. I therefore accosted the man.

"Will bed and supper be provided for me here?" I asked. "I am tired out
with a long tramp over the hills, and hungry enough to pay anything in
reason----"

I stopped, for the man had disappeared. He had not paused at my appeal,
and the mist had swallowed him. But at the break in my sentence his
voice came back in good-natured tones, and I heard:

"Supper will be ready at nine, and there are beds for all. Enter, sir;
you are the first to arrive, but the others cannot be far behind."

A queer greeting certainly. But when I strove to question him as to its
meaning, his voice returned to me from such a distance that I doubted if
my words had reached him any more than his answer had reached me.

"Well," thought I, "it isn't as if a lodging had been denied me. He
invited me to enter, and enter I will."

The house, to which I now naturally directed a glance of much more
careful scrutiny than before, was no ordinary farm-building, but a
rambling old mansion, made conspicuously larger here and there by
jutting porches and more than one convenient lean-to. Though furnished,
warmed, and lighted with candles, as I have previously described, it had
about it an air of disuse which made me feel myself an intruder, in
spite of the welcome I had received. But I was not in a position to
stand upon ceremony, and ere long I found myself inside the great room
and before the blazing logs whose glow had lighted up the doorway and
added its own attraction to the other allurements of the inviting place.

Though the open door made a draught which was anything but pleasant, I
did not feel like closing it, and was astonished to observe the effect
of the mist through the square thus left op