The hours crept on.

Day began to break.  The pale clothing of the morning was spread out, dimly creased with shadow, over the bowling-green.  The dawn lighted up the front of the Tadcaster Inn.  Master Nicless had not gone to bed, because sometimes the same occurrence produces sleeplessness in many.

Troubles radiate in every direction.  Throw a stone in the water, and count the splashes.

Master Nicless felt himself impeached.  It is very disagreeable that such things should happen in one’s house.  Master Nicless, uneasy, and foreseeing misfortunes, meditated.  He regretted having received such people into his house.  Had he but known that they would end by getting him into mischief!  But the question was how to get rid of them?  He had given Ursus a lease.  What a blessing if he could free himself from it!  How should he set to work to drive them out?

Suddenly the door of the inn resounded with one of those tumultuous knocks which in England announces “Somebody.”  The gamut of knocking corresponds with the ladder of hierarchy.

It was not quite the knock of a lord; but it was the knock of a justice.

The trembling innkeeper half opened his window.  There was, indeed, the magistrate.  Master Nicless perceived at the door a body of police, from the head of which two men detached themselves, one of whom was the justice of the quorum.

Master Nicless had seen the justice of the quorum that morning, and recognized him.

He did not know the other, who was a fat gentleman, with a waxen-coloured face, a fashionable wig, and a travelling cloak.  Nicless was much afraid of the first of these persons, the justice of the quorum.  Had he been of the court, he would have feared the other most, because it was Barkilphedro.

One of the subordinates knocked at the door again violently.

The innkeeper, with great drops of perspiration on his brow, from anxiety, opened it.

The justice of the quorum, in the tone of a man who is employed in matters of police, and who is well acquainted with various shades of vagrancy, raised his voice, and asked, severely, for

“Master Ursus!”

The host, cap in hand, replied,—­

“Your honour; he lives here.”

“I know it,” said the justice.

“No doubt, your honour.”

“Tell him to come down.”

“Your honour, he is not here.”

“Where is he?”

“I do not know.”

“How is that?”

“He has not come in.”

“Then he must have gone out very early?”

“No; but he went out very late.”

“What vagabonds!” replied the justice.

“Your honour,” said Master Nicless, softly, “here he comes.”

Ursus, indeed, had just come in sight, round a turn of the wall.  He was returning to the inn.  He had passed nearly the whole night between the jail, where at midday he had seen Gwynplaine, and the cemetery, where at midnight he had heard the grave filled up.  He was pallid with two pallors—­that of sorrow and of twilight.