nt within him. Till this night, Death
and he had not once met, even in thought.

He took a few turns up and down the room, then stopped. The noise
made by his boots on the poorly-carpeted floor jarred on his ear. He
hesitated a little, and ended by taking the boots off, and walking
backward and forward noiselessly.

All desire to sleep or to rest had left him. The bare thought of lying
down on the unoccupied bed instantly drew the picture on his mind of a
dreadful mimicry of the position of the dead man. Who was he? What was
the story of his past life? Poor he must have been, or he would not have
stopped at such a place as the Two Robins Inn; and weakened, probably,
by long illness, or he could hardly have died in the manner which
the landlord had described. Poor, ill, lonely--dead in a strange
place--dead, with nobody but a stranger to pity him. A sad story; truly,
on the mere face of it, a very sad story.

While these thoughts were passing through his mind, he had stopped
insensibly at the window, close to which stood the foot of the bed with
the closed curtains. At first he looked at it absently; then he became
conscious that his eyes were fixed on it; and then a perverse desire
took possession of him to do the very thing which he had resolved not to
do up to this time--to look at the dead man.

He stretched out his hand toward the curtains, but checked himself in
the very act of undrawing them, turned his back sharply on the bed, and
walked toward the chimney-piece, to see what things were placed on it,
and to try if he could keep the dead man out of his mind in that way.

There was a pewter inkstand on the chimney-piece, with some mildewed
remains of ink in the bottle. There were two coarse china ornaments of
the commonest kind; and there was a square of embossed card, dirty and
fly-blown, with a collection of wretched riddles printed on it, in all
sorts of zigzag directions, and in variously colored inks. He took
the card and went away to read it at the table on which the candle was
placed, sitting down with his back resolutely turned to the curtained
bed.

He read the first riddle, the second, the third, all in one corner of
the card, then turned it round impatiently to look at another. Before
he could begin reading the riddles printed here the sound of the church
clock stopped him.

Eleven.

He had got through an hour of the time in the room with the dead man.

Once more he looked at the card. It was