They were in a wide hall at the top of the house, the unceiled rafters above their heads, carpetless boards beneath their feet.  Mabel set her waiter upon a worm-eaten, iron-bound chest, and went further down the passage to get the key of the north room.  Her light footstep stirred dismal echoes in the dark corners; the wind screamed through every crack and keyhole, like a legion of piping devils; rumbled lugubriously over the steep roof.  The one candle flickering in the draught showed Mabel’s white bust and arms, like those of a phantom, beaming through a cloud of blackness, when she stooped to try the key in the lock of the prison-chamber.

After fitting it, she knocked before she turned it in the rusty wards—­again, and more loudly—­then spoke, putting her lips close to the key-hole: 

“We are friends, and have brought you supper.  Can we come in?”

There was no answer, and with a beating heart she unlocked the door, pushed it ajar, and motioned to Aunt Rachel to hold her candle up, that she might gain a view of the interior.

The wan, uncertain rays revealed the heap of mattresses, and upon them what looked like a mass of rough, wet clothing, without sound or motion.

“He is pretending to be asleep!  Take care!” whispered Mrs. Sutton, trying to restrain Mabel as she pressed by her into the room.

“He is dead, I fear!” was the low answer.

Forgetful of her nephew’s prohibition and her recent fears, the good widow entered, and leaned anxiously over the stranger’s form.  A tall, gaunt man, clad in threadbare garments, which hung loosely upon the shrunken breast and arms, black hair and beard, mottled with white, ragged, and unshorn, and dank from exposure to the snow and sleet; a chalky-white face, with closed and sunken eyes, sharpened nose, and prominent cheek-bones—­this was what they beheld as the candle flamed up steadily in the comparatively still air of the ceiled apartment.  The miserable coat was buttoned up to his chin, and the shreds of a coarse woollen comforter, torn from his throat at his capture, still hung about his shoulders.  His clothes were sodden with wet, as Harrison had said, and the solitary pretence at rendering him comfortable for the night, had been the act of a negro, who contemptuously flung an old blanket across his nether limbs before leaving him to his lethargic slumbers.  He had not moved since they tossed him, like a worthless sack, upon this sorry resting-place, but lay an unsightly huddle of arms, legs, and head, such as was never achieved, much less continued, by any one save a drunken man or a corpse.  Mabel ended the awed silence.

“This is torpor—­not sleep, nor yet death,” she said, without recoiling from the pitiful wreck.

Indeed, as she spoke, she bent to feel his pulse; held the emaciated wrist in her warm fingers until she could determine whether the feeble stroke were a reality, or a trick of the imagination.