"Male or female, sir?" says Mr. Krook. "Male. The person who does copying." Mr. Krook has eyed his man narrowly. Knows him by sight. Has an indistinct impression of his aristocratic repute. "Did you wish to see him, sir?" "Yes." "It's what I seldom do myself," says Mr. Krook with a grin. "Shall I call him down? But it's a weak chance if he'd come, sir!" "I'll go up to him, then," says Mr. Tulkinghorn. "Second floor, sir. Take the candle. Up there!" Mr. Krook, with his cat beside him, stands at the bottom of the staircase, looking after Mr. Tulkinghorn. "Hi--hi!" he says, when Mr. Tulkinghorn has nearly disappeared. The lawyer looks down over the hand-rail. The cat expands her wicked mouth, and snarls at him. "Order, Lady Jane! Behave yourself to visitors, my lady! You know what they say of my lodger?" whispers Krook, going up a step or two. "What do they say of him?" "They say he has sold himself to the Enemy; but you and I know better--he don't buy. I'll tell you what, though; my lodger is so black-humored and gloomy, that I believe he'd as soon make that bargain as any other. Don't put him out, sir. That's my advice!" Mr. Tulkinghorn with a nod goes on his way. He comes to the dark door on the second floor. He knocks, receives no answer, opens it, and accidentally extinguishes his candle in doing so. The air of the room is almost bad enough to have extinguished it, if he had not. It is a small room, nearly black with soot, and grease, and dirt. In the rusty skeleton of a grate, pinched at the middle as if Poverty had griped it, a red coke fire burns low. In the corner, by the chimney, stand a deal table and a broken desk: a wilderness marked with a rain of ink. In another corner, a ragged old portmanteau on one of the two chairs, serves for cabinet or wardrobe; no larger one is needed, for it collapses like the cheeks of a starved man. The floor is bare; except that one old mat, trodden to shreds of rope-yarn, lies perishing upon the hearth. No curtain vails the darkness of the night, but the discolored shutters are drawn together; and through the two gaunt holes pierced in them, famine might be staring in--the Banshee of the man upon the bed.