It was a rather late hour when the landlord went to bed that night. As was usual with him on the cold nights of the autumn and winter time, he found it hard to tear himself away from the cosy warmth of the fireside and his generous potations. Midnight had long gone when he rose from his chair, tried the kitchen door according to his inveterate custom, and then stumbled up the creaking stairs to the icy sheets of his chamber. Perchance they clapped too cold about his ancient blood for sleep to visit him; or likelier, he had an indigestion of the mind from excess of things to think about, for close his eyes as often and firmly as he might, or insinuate his fat person in every fantastic posture in the cold recesses of his bed, sleep was banished from him utterly. Those nerves of his still twittered in his old head. The events that had recently come within his ken were telling upon him. He could not grapple with them with the ease and deftness of a younger man, or a man endowed with stronger fibres in his character. Do as he would, there was no sleep for him to-night. When he shut his eyes he saw the King with rime on his fine cloak, and rings on his fingers, and a feather in his hat, and a retinue of noble-looking gentlemen bowing low before him. When he opened them, the ugly visage of Diggory Fargus, that dreadful mariner, was grinning at him from the foot of the four-poster. His image was quite as realistic as the King’s. How those earrings bobbed about in his ears! Twice when he was dozing off a convulsive twitch shot through his limbs, and he was compelled to draw his breath cautiously, for he felt a knife to be buried to the hilt in his back. Suddenly he withdrew his ears from a coil of sheets, and twisted his nightcapped head half across the bed in a strained attitude of listening. When the sound had first assailed him, he thought it was a rat scratching through a wainscot. But now there was the muffled grunt of a key revolving in a lock; and then a distinct, timid patter of footsteps. The chamber in which he lay was next to that of the lady; she was leaving her room at last. She was probably only descending to the buttery to procure some necessary for her stricken companion. Or could it be that she was making her escape from the inn? Certainly her movements were cloaked in caution itself. He could hear her stealthy feet on the creaking stairs. Less than a minute afterwards he sprang from his couch with an oath; he could hear her unbarring the outer door.