It was night in the old cathedral town. The ten o'clock bell had rung, and Mr. Galloway, proctor and surrogate, at home in his residence in the Boundaries, was thinking he might go to rest. For several days he had been feeling very much out of sorts, and this evening the symptoms had culminated in what seemed a bad cold, attended with feverishness and pain in all his limbs. The old proctor was one of those people whose mind insensibly sways the body; and the mysterious disappearance of Arthur Channing was troubling him to sickness. He had caused a huge fire to be made up in his bedroom, and was seated by it, groaning; his slippered feet on a warm cushion, a railway rug enveloping his coat, and back, and shoulders; a white cotton nightcap with a hanging tassel ornamenting gracefully his head. One of his servants had just brought up a basinful of hot gruel, holding at least a quart, and put it on the stand by his easy chair. Mr. Galloway was groaning at the gruel as much as with pain, for he hated gruel like poison. Thinking it might be less nauseous if disposed of at an unbroken draught, were that possible--or at least soonest over--Mr. Galloway caught up the basin and put it to his lips. With a cry and a splutter, down went the basin again. The stuff was scalding hot. And whether Mr. Galloway's tongue, or teeth, or temper suffered most, he would have been puzzled to confess. It was at this untoward moment--Mr. Galloway's face turning purple, and himself choking and coughing--that a noise, as of thunder, suddenly awoke the echoes of the Boundaries. Shut up in his snug room hearing sounds chiefly through the windows, the startled Mr. Galloway wondered what it was, and edged his white nightcap off one ear to listen. He had then the satisfaction of discovering that the noise was at his own front door. Somebody had evidently got hold of the knocker (an appendage recently made to the former naked panels), and was rapping and rattling as if never intending to leave off. And now the bell-handle was, pulled in accompaniment--as a chorus accompanies a song--and the alarmed household were heard flying towards the door from all quarters. "Is it the fire-engine?" groaned Mr. Galloway to himself. "I didn't hear it come up." It appeared not to be the fire-engine. A moment or two, and Mr. Galloway was conscious of a commotion on the stairs, some visitor making his way up; his man-servant offering a feeble opposition. "What on earth does John mean? He must be a fool--letting people come up here!" thought Mr. Galloway, apostrophising his many years' servitor. "Hark! It can never be the Dean!" That any other living man, whether church dignitary or ordinary mortal, would venture to invade him in his private sanctum, take him by storm in his own chamber, was beyond belief. Mr. Galloway, all fluttered and fevered, hitched his white nightcap a little higher, turned his wondering face to the door, and sat listening.