Isaac could only
answer in a whisper. "A woman, with a knife in her hand," he
gasped out. "In my room--a fair, yellow-haired woman; she jobbed
at me with the knife twice over."
The landlord's pale cheeks grew paler. He looked at Isaac eagerly
by the flickering light of his candle, and his face began to get
red again; his voice altered, too, as well as his complexion.
"She seems to have missed you twice," he said.
"I dodged the knife as it came down," Isaac went on, in the same
scared whisper. "It struck the bed each time."
The landlord took his candle into the bedroom immediately. In
less than a minute he came out again into the passage in a
violent passion.
"The devil fly away with you and your woman with the knife! There
isn't a mark in the bedclothes anywhere. What do you mean by
coming into a man's place and frightening his family out of their
wits about a dream?"
"I'll leave your house," said Isaac, faintly. "Better out on the
road, in rain and dark, on my road home, than back again in that
room, after what I've seen in it. Lend me a light to get my
clothes by, and tell me what I'm to pay."
"Pay!" cried the landlord, leading the way with his light sulkily
into the bedroom. "You'll find your score on the slate when you
go downstairs.
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