A story of this order is that of a lady who set out in her carriage to visit some friends in Yorkshire. She had come to within thirty miles of her destination, when a thunderstorm which had been threatening broke violently overhead. Struggling against the elements, the coachman was glad to espy an old-fashioned roadside inn presently visible ahead, and, his mistress expressing a wish to alight and rest until the storm should abate, he drove up to the door. It was a wild and solitary spot (they always are in these stories, and it is astonishing how solitary and wild they are, and how many such places appeared to exist). The rusty sign creaked dismally overhead, and the window-shutters flapped violently in the wind on their broken hinges; altogether it was not an inviting spot. But any port in a storm, and so the lady alighted. She was shown into a large old-fashioned apartment, and the horses and carriage were stabled until such time as it might be possible to resume the journey. But, instead of passing off, the storm grew momentarily worse. Calling her servant she asked him if it were possible to continue that night, and on his replying in the negative, reluctantly resigned herself to staying under a strange roof. She had her dinner in solitary state, and then found all the evening before her, with nothing to occupy the time. She went to the window and looked out upon the howling storm, and, tired of that uninviting prospect, gazed listlessly about the room. It was a large room, ill-furnished, and somewhat out of repair, for the inn had seen its best days. Evidences of a more prosperous time were left in the shape of some scattered articles of furniture of a superior kind and in the presence of a curious piece of ancient tapestry facing her on the opposite wall, bearing a design of a life-sized Roman warrior wielding a truncheon.