Another glass of ale
before you turn in? No! Well, how such a sober man as you comes
to be out of place is more than I can make out, for one. Here's
where you're to sleep. You're our only lodger to-night, and I
think you'll say my missus has done her best to make you
comfortable. You're quite sure you won't have another glass of
ale? Very well. Good-night."
It was half-past eleven by the clock in the passage as they went
upstairs to the bedroom, the window of which looked on to the
wood at the back of the house.
Isaac locked the door, set his candle on the chest of drawers,
and wearily got ready for bed.
The bleak autumn wind was still blowing, and the solemn,
monotonous, surging moan of it in the wood was dreary and awful
to hear through the night-silence. Isaac felt strangely wakeful.
He resolved, as he lay down in bed, to keep the candle alight
until he began to grow sleepy, for there was something
unendurably depressing in the bare idea of lying awake in the
darkness, listening to the dismal, ceaseless moaning of the wind
in the wood.
Sleep stole on him before he was aware of it. His eyes closed,
and he fell off insensibly to rest without having so much as
thought of extinguishing the candle.
The first sensation of which he was conscious after sinking into
slumber was a strange shivering that ran through him suddenly
from head to foot, and a dreadful sinking pain at the heart, such
as he had never felt before.
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