“I--I thought I heard the sound of horses upon the road a minute since, as I sat by my kitchen fire,” said the landlord. The frenzy was past. Gamaliel Hooker was beginning to speak again in his natural person. He was gradually becoming once more the master of his own mind. Lady Farnham ran to the window. She pressed her ear upon it. Not a sound fell within the chamber; but all breathed heavily in an agony of listening. There was only the never-ceasing voice of the breakers, beating against the wind and rocks. “I only hear the roar of the sea,” said the lady, a minute afterwards. “Plainly you were mistaken, landlord,” said the King, impassively. “But the great distress your fancies put you in was highly commendable to you. Your fears are groundless; but the new proofs they have furnished of your fidelity and good feeling towards us shall certainly not be forgotten. Landlord, we thank you.” The landlord bent his white face. He had so much recovered himself, that as he backed out of the King’s presence he was able to say: “What hour do you desire your supper, Sire?” The King took out his watch and glanced at it. “It is now ten minutes after eight of the clock,” he said to Lady Farnham. “Your friends are coming for my lord at half-past nine. I think it will be well, dear lady, if we all sup here together in this chamber at nine o’clock. We shall require a good meal, methinks; for many arduous passages may be before us all.” “At nine o’clock then, Sire,” said the landlord, “it shall be laid in this chamber for three persons.” The landlord closed the door and got himself below. His first action was to regulate the clock. Ten minutes past eight: the hour was at hand. The landlord stood in the middle of the kitchen listening; there was still only the sound of the sea. Then he heard the cry of a wild bird in the wintry night. But still the noise of horses came not. Now that the frenzy of his madness was past, the landlord, in the reaction of it, felt that he had better control of himself. It was probably because his senses were numbed a little; the paralysis that had fallen upon them that morning when the King had first revealed his presence was coming upon them again. He was conscious of the same strange stupor creeping through his veins; but this time it was horrible. There was the nausea of the impending to embitter it. The sensation it induced was not unlike that favourite form of nightmare of falling slowly down into space from some dizzy incredible height. He seemed to have been cut adrift from all that bound him to existence; he was being precipitated slowly, feet foremost, into the black gulf of the infinite yawning beneath him.