She could see him dimly now, under the street lamp that sent
a faint, flickering light through the fog. Fear gave her eyes. She
saw, or thought she saw, something sinister about the stranger's
features. Her old terrors awoke; she took advantage of a kind of
hesitation on his part, slipped through the shadows to the door of the
solitary house, pressed a spring, and vanished swiftly as a phantom.
For awhile the stranger stood motionless, gazing up at the house. It
was in some sort a type of the wretched dwellings in the suburb; a
tumble-down hovel, built of rough stones, daubed over with a coat of
yellowish stucco, and so riven with great cracks that there seemed to
be danger lest the slightest puff of wind might blow it down. The
roof, covered with brown moss-grown tiles, had given way in several
places, and looked as though it might break down altogether under the
weight of the snow. The frames of the three windows on each story were
rotten with damp and warped by the sun; evidently the cold must find
its way inside. The house standing thus quite by itself looked like
some old tower that Time had forgotten to destroy. A faint light shone
from the attic windows pierced at irregular distances in the roof;
otherwise the whole building was in total darkness.
Meanwhile the old lady climbed not without difficulty up the rough,
clumsily built staircase, with a rope by way of a hand-rail.
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