In the sombre gliding river below, the green lights of vaguely looming blacknesses that were canal-boats, splashed emerald flames in the inky flood. Loomed now across the waters the massive solidity of the twin-towered cathedral, black against the black night; and beyond and low down upon the pitchy tide the pale lights that burn all night in the house of the dishonoured dead gleamed through the window-slats of the Morgue. Noll, hearing the cough again, roused to the sound that the others had left the riverside. He crossed the drenched quays, and leaving the river behind him, struck into a narrow street that was possessed by the spectral wraithes flung down the grimy old walls by the ghostly lamps that hung thereon. Along the gloomy thoroughfare the chill airs, from the river hard by, set the lamp’s flame flickering, and sent dusky shadows moving stealthily out of dingy doorways and black corners, shadows that stealthily stole back again. And amidst the silent spectres, flecked by the down-flung light of the creaking wall-lamps, flitted the figures of the man and woman; and back from amongst the ghostly wraithes came the pitiful harsh cough. Their shadowy figures turned into the squalid street that is called the Rue Galande; and Noll closely followed them, they came to a halt before the low arch of a doorway and stepped out of sight. When Noll reached the arch, the red maw of which yawned into the sordid street, he saw by the legend written upon the glass of the battered gas-lamp which hung awry overhead that he was at the threshold of the tavern of _The Golden Sun_. Across the dark stretch of rudely paved courtyard beyond, the two figures were passing blackly under the yellow flood of a gas-lamp, the restless flame of which showed a flight of steps leading underground. The twain descended into the gloom of the passage and were swallowed in the cellars from which came a gust of song and the sound of music as the doors opened and shut upon them. Noll descended the steps, pushed open the doors at the bottom, and stepped into the tavern of _The Golden Sun_. He blinked at the lighted room, dim as it was. The heavy air, laden with the fumes of beer, and hazy with the clouds of tobacco-smoke, met him with a pleasant warmth of welcome. Through the haze he saw that the people sat, silently giving their whole attention to a slender youth who stood at the far end of the room declaiming verse, leaning upon a piano--a grey-haired musician touching mellow chords gently and running a light accompaniment of music atune with the speaker’s fine voice. Noll was little in need of the superfluous pantomime of a burly thick-set waiter who made melodramatic signs to him to stand still--to make no sound.