I had come across strange people in my travels, but I have no hesitation in saying that my host was the sullenest, sulkiest, most boorish specimen of human nature I had as yet met with. In spite of his recent ill-treatment of me I was quite ready to establish matters on a friendly footing, and made several attempts to draw him into conversation. The brute would only answer in monosyllables, or often not answer at all. So I gave up talking as a bad job, and sat in silence, smoking and looking into the fire, thinking a good deal, it may be, of some one I should have met that morning at Lilymere had the wretched snow but kept off. The long clock--that cumbrous eight-day machine which inevitably occupies one corner of every cottager's kitchen--struck nine. The woman rose and left us. I concluded she was going to bed. If so, I envied her. Her husband showed no sign of retiring. He still sat over the fire, opposite me. By this time I was dreadfully tired: every bone in my body ached. The hard chair which an hour or two ago, seemed all I could desire, now scarcely came up to my ideas of the comfort I was justly entitled to claim. My sulky companion had been drinking silently but steadily. Perhaps the liquor he had poured into himself might have rendered his frame of mind more pleasant and amenable to reason. "My good fellow," I said, "your chairs are excellent ones of the kind, but deucedly uncomfortable. I am horribly tired. If the resources of your establishment can't furnish a bed for me to sleep in, couldn't you find a mattress or something to lay down before the fire?" "You've got all you'll get to-night," he answered, knocking the ashes out his pipe. "Oh, but I say!" "So do I say. I say this: If you don't like it you can leave it. We didn't ask you to come." "You infernal beast," I muttered--and meant it too--I declare had I not been so utterly worn out, I would have had that bullet-headed ruffian up for a few rounds on his own kitchen floor, and tried to knock him into a more amiable frame of mind. "Never mind," I said; "but, remember, civility costs nothing, and often gets rewarded. However, if you wish to retire to your own couch don't let your native politeness stand in your way. Pray don't hesitate on my account. Leave plenty of fuel, and I shall manage until morning." "Where you stay, I stay," he answered. Then he filled his pipe, and once more relapsed into stony silence. I bothered about him no more. I dozed off for a few minutes--woke--dozed off again for some hours. I was in an uncomfortable sort of half sleep, crammed full of curious dreams--dreams from which I started, wondering where I was and how I got there. I even began to grow nervous. All sorts of horrible travellers' tales ran through my head. It was in just such places as this that unsuspecting voyagers were stated to have been murdered and robbed, by just such unmitigated ruffians as my host--I can tell you that altogether I spent a most pleasant night.