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ejaculation from his companion.
    ‘If we don’t break our necks meanwhile in this confounded darkness,’ retorted the other, for his horse had just stumbled and the inexperienced rider had been very nearly pitched over into the mud.
    ‘I be as anxious to arrive as you are, Mounzeer,’ observed the countryman laconically.
    ‘I thought you knew the way,’ muttered the stranger.
    ”Ave I not brought you safely through the darkness?’ retorted the other; ‘you was pretty well ztranded at Chelwood Mounzeer, or I be much mistaken. Who else would ‘ave brought you out ‘ere at this time o’ night, I’d like to know—and in this weather too? You wanted to get to th’ Bottom Inn and didn’t know ‘ow to zet about it: none o’ the gaffers up to Chelwood ‘peared eager to ‘elp you when I come along. Well, I’ve brought you to th’ Bottom Inn and…Whoa! Whoa! my beauty! Whoa, confound you! Whoa!’
    And for the next moment or two the whole of his attention had perforce to be concentrated on the business of sticking to his saddle whilst he brought his fagged-out, ill-conditioned nag to a standstill.
    The little glimmer of light had suddenly revealed itself in the shape of a lanthorn hung inside the wooden porch of a small house which had loomed out of the darkness and the fog. It stood at an angle of the road where a narrow lane had its beginnings ere it plunged into the moor beyond and was swallowed up by the all-enveloping gloom. The house was small and ugly; square like a box and built of grey stone, its front flush with the road, its rear flanked by several small oubuildings. Above the porch hung a plain sign-board bearing the legend: ‘The Bottom Inn’ in white letters upon a black ground: to right and left of the porch there was a window with closed shutters, and on the floor above two more windows—also shuttered–completed the architectural features of the Bottom Inn.
    It was uncompromisingly ugly and uninviting, for beyond the faint glimmer of the lanthorn only one or two narrow streaks of light filtrated through the chinks of the shutters.
    IV
    The travellers, after some difference of opinion with their respective horses, contrived to pull up and to dismount without any untoward accident. The stranger looked about him, peering into the darkness. The place indeed appeared dismal and inhospitable enough: its solitary aspect suggested footpads and the abode of cut-throats. The silence of the moor, the pall of mist and gloom that hung over upland and valley sent a shiver through his spine.
    ‘You are sure this is the place?’ he queried.
    ‘Can’t ye zee the zign?’ retorted the other gruffly.
    ‘Can you hold the horses while I go in?’
    ‘I doan’t know as ‘ow I can, Mounzeer. I’ve never ‘eld two ‘orzes all at once. Suppose they was to start kickin’ or thought o’ runnin’ away.’
    ‘Running away, you fool!’ muttered the stranger, whose temper had evidently suffered grievously during the weary, cold journey from Chelwood. ‘I’ll break your satanι head if anything happens to the beasts. How can I get back to Bath save the way I came? Do you think I want to spend the night in this God-forsaken hole?’
    Without waiting to hear any further protests from the lout, he turned into the porch and with his riding whip gave three consecutive raps against the door of the inn, followed by two more. The next moment there was the sound of rattling of bolts and chains, the door was cautiously opened and a timid voice queried:
    ‘Is it Mounzeer?’
    ‘Pardieu! Who else?’ growled the stranger. ‘Open the door, woman. I am perished with cold.’
    With an unceremonious kick he pushed the door further open and strode in. A woman was standing in the dimly lighted passage. As the stranger walked in she bobbed him a respectful curtsey.
    ‘It is all right, Mounzeer,’ she said; ‘the Captain’s in the coffee-room. He came over from Bristol early this afternoon.’
    ‘No one else here, I