back, do you? There's the bed I promised
you, clean and comfortable. There's the
man I warranted not to disturb you, quiet in
this world for ever. If you're frightened to
stop alone with him, that's not my look out.
I've kept my part of the bargain, and I mean
to keep the money. I'm not Yorkshire,
myself, young gentleman; but I've lived long
enough in these parts to have my wits
sharpened; and I shouldn't wonder if you
found out the way to brighten up yours, next
time you come among us." With these
words, the landlord turned towards the door,
and laughed to himself softly, in high
satisfaction at his own sharpness.

Startled and shocked as he was, Arthur
had by this time sufficiently recovered
himself to feel indignant at the trick that
had been played on him, and at the
insolent manner in which the landlord
exulted in it.

"Don't laugh," he said sharply, "till you
are quite sure you have got the laugh against
me. You shan't have the five shillings for
nothing, my man. I'll keep the bed."

"Will you?" said the landlord. "Then I
wish you a good night's rest." With that
brief farewell, he went out, and shut the door
after him.

A good night's rest! The words had
hardly been spoken, the door had hardly
been closed, before Arthur half-repented the
hasty words that had just escaped him.
Though not naturally over-sensitive, and not
wanting in courage of the moral as well as
the physical sort, the presence of the dead
man had an instantaneously chilling effect on
his mind when he found himself alone in the
room- alone, and bound by his own rash
words to stay there till the next morning.
An older man would have thought nothing
of those words, and would have acted, without
reference to them, as his calmer sense
suggested. But Arthur was too young to
treat the ridicule, even of his inferiors, with
contempt- too young not to fear the momentary
humiliation of falsifying his own foolish
boast, more than he feared the trial of
watching out the long night in the same
chamber with the dead.

"It is but a few hours," he thought to
himself, "and I can get away the first thing
in the morning."

He was looking towards the occupied bed
as that idea passed through his mind, and
the sharp angular eminence made in the
clothes by the dead man's upturned feet
again caught his eye. He advanced and
drew the curtains, purposely abstaining, as
he did so, from looking at the face of the
corpse, lest he might unnerve himself at the
outset by fastening some ghastly impression
of it on his mind. He drew the curtain
very gently, and sighed involuntarily as he
closed it. "Poor fellow," he said, almost as
sadly as if he had known the man. "Ah,
poor fellow!"

He went next to the window. The night
was black, and he could see nothing from it.
The rain still pattered heavily against the
glass. He inferred, from hearing it, that
the window was at the back of the house;
remembering that the front was sheltered
from the weather by the court and the buildings
over it.

While he was still standing at the window
—for even the dreary rain was a relief,
because of the sound it made; a relief, also,
because it moved, and had some faint suggestion,
in consequence, of life and companionship
in it- while he was standing at the
window, and looking vacantly into the black
darkness outside, he heard a distant church-
clock strike ten. Only ten! How was he
to pass the time till the house was astir the
next morning?

Under any other circumstances, he would
have gone down to the public-house parlour,
would have called for his grog, and would
have laughed and talked with the company
assembled as familiarly as if he had known
them all his life. But the very thought of
whiling away the time in this manner was
now distasteful to him. The new situation
in which he was placed seemed to have
altered him to himself already. Thus far,
his life had been the common, trifling, prosaic,
surface-life of a prosperous young man, with
no troubles to conquer, and no trials to
face. He had lost no relation whom he
loved, no friend whom he treasured. Till
this night, what share he had of the immortal
inheritance that is divided amongst us all,
had lain dormant within him. Till this
night, Death and he had not once met, even
in thought.

He took a few turns up and down the
room—then stopped. The noise made by his
boots on the poorly carpeted floor, jarred on
his ear. He hesitated a little, and ended by
taking the boots off, and walking backwards
and forwards noiselessly. All desire to sleep
or to rest had left him. The bare thought of
lying down on the unoccupied bed instantly
drew the picture on his mind of a dreadful
mimicry of the position of the dead man.
Who was he? What was the story of his
past life? Poor he must have been, or he
would not have stopped at such a place as
The Two Robins Inn—and weakened,
probably, by long illness, or he could hardly
have died in the manner which the landlord
had described. Poor, ill, lonely,—dead in a
strange place; dead, with nobody but a
stranger to pity him. A sad story: truly,
on the mere face of it, a very sad story.

While these thoughts were passing through
his mind, he had stopped insensibly at the
window, close to which stood the foot of the
bed with the closed curtains. At first he
looked at it absently; then he became
conscious that his eyes were fixed on it; and
then, a perverse desire took possession of him
to do the very thing which he had resolved