And, indeed, there was a ghostly flavour about the whole place as they walked slowly up the wide stairs, with the darkness closing densely around them. Every footfall seemed to awake an echo, and the painted faces of the old Garsworths frowned and smiled grotesquely on them from the walls as they moved silently along. A wide corridor, another short flight of stairs, and then a heavy door, underneath which could be seen a thin streak of light. Pausing here, Una opened it, and the four passed into Squire Garsworth's bedroom, which struck the doctor as being almost as chill and ghostly as the hall. It was a large room with no carpet on the polished floor, hardly any furniture and no lights, save at the further end, where a candle, standing on a small round table, feebly illuminated a huge curtained bed set on a small square of carpet on which were also the round table aforesaid and two heavy chairs, the whole forming a kind of dismal oasis in the desert of bare floor. On the bed lay the squire, an attenuated old man with a face looking as though it were carved out of old ivory, fierce black eyes and scanty white hair flowing from under a black velvet skull cap. A multiplicity of clothes were heaped on the bed to keep him warm, and his thin arms and claw-like hands were outside the blankets plucking restlessly at the counterpane. Beside him stood a woman in a slate-coloured dress, with an expressionless white face and smooth black hair, drawn back over her finely shaped head. She kept her eyes on the floor and her hands folded in front of her, but, on hearing a strange footstep, turned to look at the doctor. A strangely mournful face it was, as if the shadow of a great sorrow had fallen across it and would never more be lifted. Nestley guessed this to be Patience Allerby, so the number of the extraordinary individuals who occupied Garsworth Grange was now complete. Hearing the doctor enter, Squire Garsworth, with the suspicious celerity of a sick man, raised himself on his elbow and peered malevolently into the darkness, looking like some evil magician of old time. "Who is there?" he asked in a querulous voice, "someone to rob me; thieves and rogues--all--all rogues and thieves." "It is the doctor," said Una, coming close to him. "What does he bring? what does he bring?" asked the sick man, eagerly, "life or death? Tell me, quick." "I cannot tell you till I ask a few questions," said Nestley, stepping into the radius of light. "Ha!" cried Garsworth, with sudden suspicion, "not Bland. No; a stranger. What do you want? Where is Bland?" "He is ill," said Nestley distinctly, coming close to him, "and cannot come, but I am a doctor and will do as well." The old man looked at him anxiously, seeming to devour him with the fierce intensity of his gaze. "Weak," he muttered, after a pause, "very weak, still there is intellect in the face." Then he suddenly put out his hand and grasped that of Nestley in his thin, claw-like fingers.