“Light, light!” he whispered.  “It cannot be too light for me!”

“Now, William Tyrwhitt,” I said, by-and-by, watchful of him, and marking a faint effusion of colour soak to his cheek, “you would not accept my warning, and you were extremely rude to me.  Therefore you have had an experience—­”

“An awful one,” he murmured.

“An awful one, no doubt; and to obtain surcease of the haunting memory of it, you must confide its processes to me.  But, first, I must put it to you, which is the more pusillanimous—­to refuse to submit one’s manliness to the tyranny of the unlawful, or to rush into situations you have not the nerve to adapt yourself to?”

“I could not foresee, I could not foresee.”

“Neither could I. And that was my very reason for declining the invitation.  Now proceed.”

It was long before he could.  But presently he essayed, and gathered voice with the advance of his narrative, and even unconsciously threw it into something the form of “copy.”  And here it is as he murmured it, but with a gasp for every full-stop.

“I confess I was so far moved by the tone of your protest as, after your departure, to make some cautious inquiries about the house we had visited.  I could discover nothing to satisfy my curiosity.  It was known to have been untenanted for a great number of years; but as to who was the landlord, whether Captain Iron or another, no one could inform me; and the agent for the property was of the adjacent town where you met me.  I was not fortunate, indeed, in finding that any one even knew of the oddly appointed room; but considering that, owing to the time the house had remained vacant, the existence of this eccentricity could be a tradition only with some casual few, my failure did not strike me as being at all bodeful.  On the contrary, it only whetted my desire to investigate further in person, and penetrate to the heart of a very captivating little mystery.  But probably, I thought, it is quite simple of solution, and the fact of the repairers and the landlord being in evidence at one time, a natural coincidence.

“I dined well, and sallied forth about nine o’clock.  It was a night pregnant with possibilities.  The lower strata of air were calm, but overhead the wind went down the sea with a noise of baggage-wagons, and there was an ominous hurrying and gathering together of forces under the bellying standards of the clouds.

“As I went up the steps of the lonely building, the High Street seemed to turn all its staring eyes of lamps in my direction.  ’What a droll fellow!’ they appeared to be saying; ’and how will he look when he reissues?’

“‘There ain’t nubbudy in that house,’ croaked a small boy, who had paused below, squinting up at me.

“‘How do you know?’ said I.  ‘Move on, my little man.’

“He went; and at once it occurred to me that, as no notice was taken of my repeated knockings, I might as well try the handle.  I did, found the door unlatched, as it had been in the morning, pushed it open, entered, and swung it to behind me.