The dog seemed alive enough, and sufficiently lusty to scare away ghosts, but my lord cursed him for the infernal pother he made, being out of heart, and therefore out of temper. He led his horse toward the kitchen entry whence the light of the fire came out, and stood there waiting in the throat of the short passageway, as though expecting some one to come out to him and at least be decently servile. But since no living soul appeared to answer the barking of the dog and the clatter of hoofs on the stones, he hitched the bridle over a hook in the wall and marched in slowly, yet with the slight swagger of a man who has no reason to be proud of his courage, and yet is determined not to be put out of countenance by anything he may see or hear. But there was nothing tangibly alive in Thorn that night, save the dog in the yard; nothing but the crusts and embers of life, and a silence amid the rush of the wind that made the place seem cold and ominous. A man’s nerve may come back to him again when he has got a grip upon realities, but surmises and conjectures at midnight are apt to run toward emotionalism and panic. There were the blazing fire, the remnants of a meal upon the table, the whining of the hungry dog to prompt him to a conclusion. But my Lord of Gore began to shiver inwardly, and to become conscious of an empty feeling under the heart and of a vague horror that seemed to penetrate the air. Yet a lust to see the end of it, and a blind impatience that set aside shadows and suspicions, gave him sufficient animal courage to light the lantern his son had left and to go exploring through the ruins. The ways of Thorn seemed known to him, for he went first to the tower; nor did he need to go beyond the first few steps in order to discover the ooze of a tragedy staining the stones. None the less he went on doggedly, as though carried upward by the very ferment of the passions in him, greatly dismayed within himself, yet greatly afraid of missing the whole truth. And so the lantern went jerking upward into the darkness of the tower, its movements seeming to signal some restless, devil-driven quest after unhallowed spoil. When Stephen Gore came back again into the blaze and warmth of the kitchen he looked shrunken and ashy about the mouth, and he walked in a stooping, hollowchested way like a man huddling into himself because of the cold. He closed both doors, and even the doors of the cupboards, after peering into them, as though he were afraid of the dark and of any dim, unlit corner. Then he drew the couch up close to the fire, spreading his hands to it, and staring at the flames with a vacant, colorless face. The horror of some unseen thing seemed in his eyes, and his lips fell apart and loosened like the lips of a very old and feeble man.