I stole to the door and peep’d out. A lantern hung in the passage, and showed the staircase directly in front of me. I stay’d for a moment to pull off my boots, and, holding them in my left hand, crept up the stairs. In the kitchen, the girl was singing and clattering the glasses together. Behind the door, at the head of the stairs, I heard voices talking. I slipp’d on my boots again and tapp’d on the panel. “Come in!” Let me try to describe that on which my eyes rested as I push’d the door wide. ’Twas a long room, wainscoted half up the wall in some dark wood, and in daytime lit by one window only, which now was hung with red curtains. By the fireplace, where a brisk wood fire was crackling, lean’d the young gentlewoman I had met at Hungerford, who, as she now turn’d her eyes upon me, ceas’d fingering the guitar or mandoline that she held against her waist, and raised her pretty head not without curiosity. But ’twas on the table in the centre of the chamber that my gaze settled; and on two men beside it, of whom I must speak more particularly. The elder, who sat in a high-back’d chair, was a little, frail, deform’d gentleman of about fifty, dress’d very richly in dark velvet and furs, and wore on his head a velvet skullcap, round which his white hair stuck up like a ferret’s. But the oddest thing about him was a complexion that any maid of sixteen would give her ears for—of a pink and white so transparent that it seem’d a soft light must be glowing beneath his skin. On either cheek bone this delicate coloring centred in a deeper flush. This is as much as I need say about his appearance, except that his eyes were very bright and sharp, and his chin stuck out like a vicious mule’s. The table before him was cover’d with bottles and flasks, in the middle of which stood a silver lamp burning, and over it a silver saucepan that sent up a rare fragrance as the liquid within it simmer’d and bubbled. So eager was the old gentleman in watching the progress of his mixture, that he merely glanc’d up at my entrance, and then, holding up a hand for silence, turn’d his eyes on the saucepan again. The second man was the broad-shouldered lackey I had seen riding behind the coach: and now stood over the saucepan with a twisted flask in his hand, from which he pour’d a red syrup very gingerly, drop by drop, with the tail of his eye turn’d on his master’s face, that he might know when to cease. Now it may be that my entrance upset this experiment in strong drinks. At any rate, I had scarce come to a stand about three paces inside the door, when the little old gentleman bounces up in a fury, kicks over his chair, hurls the nearest bottles to right and left, and sends the silver saucepan spinning across the table to my very feet, where it scalded me clean through the boot, and made me hop for pain. “Spoil’d—spoil’d!” he scream’d: “drench’d in filthy liquor, when it should have breath’d but a taste!”