Glancing with frowning eyes, at the little forlorn building livid above him against a wall of menacing purple, the horseman pricked his nag to the slight ascent, and, clattering up to the inn door, flung himself out of the saddle and looped his reins to a ring set in the lintel-post. Straightway he crossed the threshold, and turning sharply to the left, found himself in the room of the bay-window and the tap of the “Dog and Duck.” Not a soul was in it--no sign of life, but, somewhere, a distant murmuring of voices. It was a paltry little shop, with a pewtered counter, and under it, on the customer-side, a ditch or groove set in the floor and filled with sawdust for obvious purposes. A few beer-barrels; a squat flask or two of schiedam on a shelf; some common earthenware mugs, white with a blue band, and bearing the excise stamp on a tin bottom--these were the important features of the bar. Above the latter, from a blackened beam, hung a great ship’s lantern, eloquent of rancid oil; and to the back was a glazed door leading into a room no larger than a cabin, in which a little fire blinked a red eye like a drowsy watch-dog. Mr. Tuke--fingering in the pocket of his riding-coat the butt of a duelling pistol, loaded and primed--rapped on the counter with his riding-whip. Listening, he was conscious of a sudden cessation of the murmuring sounds--of an appreciable pause; and then a door opened gently, and somebody came into the bar-parlour. This new-comer, whoever he was--for he took stock in the dusk without showing himself--seemed to go out softly again after a moment’s scrutiny; and following his exit, the other was dimly aware of the sounds again, but more subdued, and broken with an intermittent cough that was like suppressed laughter. He rapped again, and immediately the door was opened a second time, but now with an air of business; a heavy step shuffled across the cabin, and the landlord appeared at the glazed door. Mr. Breeds was not the Mr. Breeds of a former experience. He was in his shirt-sleeves, and was here the master of everything but himself. In illustration of this, his puffed and heated face bore an expression of boldness that was entirely the painting of strong waters. Tipsy, he was a cumbrous changeling, with just a sufficiency of humour to be insolent. He drew the red tip of his “churchwarden” so far out of the corner of his mouth as to allow passage to a question fired awry in a spit of smoke. “What d’ye call for?” Mr. Tuke put his clinched left hand on the counter, and stared sternly in the bloated face. “I want nothing but a word with you. It’s this. Do you know who I am?” “Sure,” said Mr. Breeds, with a chuckle. “That’s well. Now listen. There’s Winton, a city fifteen miles off, and a fast gaol in it. Men lie by the heels there for lesser crimes than housebreaking, and hang, too.” For all his liquid cargo the landlord went white.