Yet there was not a light, neither above nor below.  He came to the front of the house.  Still no sign of life.  He stood at the door and knocked loudly upon it, and though, when he tried the knob, he found that the door was latched, yet no one came in response.  He knocked again, and putting his ear close he heard the echoes walk through the interior of the building.

After this, the wind rose in sudden strength and deafened him with rattlings; above him, a shutter was swung open and then crashed to, so that the opening of the door was a shock of surprise to Donnegan.  A dim light from a source which he could not direct suffused the interior of the hall; the door itself was worked open a matter of inches and Donnegan was aware of two keen old eyes glittering out at him.  Beyond this he could distinguish nothing.

“Who are you?” asked a woman’s voice.  “And what do you want?”

“I’m a stranger, and I want something to eat and a place to sleep.  This house looks as if it might have spare rooms.”

“Where d’you come from?”

“Yonder,” said Donnegan, with a sufficiently noncommittal gesture.

“What’s your name?”

“Donnegan.”

“I don’t know you.  Be off with you, Mr. Donnegan!”

He inserted his foot in the closing crack of the door.

“Tell me where I’m to go?” he persisted.

At this her voice rose in pitch, with squeaky rage.

“I’ll raise the house on you!”

“Raise ’em.  Call down the man of the house.  I can talk to him better than I can to you; but I won’t walk off like this.  If you can feed me, I’ll pay you for what I eat.”

A shrill cackling—­he could not make out the words.  And since patience was not the first of Donnegan’s virtues, he seized on the knob of the door and deliberately pressed it wide.  Standing in the hall, now, and closing the door slowly behind him, he saw a woman with old, keen eyes shrinking away toward the staircase.  She was evidently in great fear, but there was something infinitely malicious in the manner in which she kept working her lips soundlessly.  She was shrinking, and half turned away, yet there was a suggestion that in an instant she might whirl and fly at his face.  The door now clicked, and with the windstorm shut away Donnegan had a queer feeling of being trapped.

“Now call the man of the house,” he repeated.  “See if I can’t come to terms with him.”

“He’d make short work of you if he came,” she replied.  She broke into a shrill laughter, and Donnegan thought he had never seen a face so ugly.  “If he came,” she said, “you’d rue the day.”

“Well, I’ll talk to you, then.  I’m not asking charity.  I want to pay for what I get.”

“This ain’t a hotel.  You go on down the road.  Inside eight miles you’ll come to the town.”

“Eight miles!”

“That’s nothing for a man to ride.”

“Not at all, if I had something to ride.”