He was shivering. For the first time that night I thought of his health. ‘Let us run,’ I said. ‘Give me your hand.’ He lowered his umbrella (it was of small use now, for the wind had risen--risen!) and then, hand in hand like young children, we ran together. It was delightful; but we were tired. So our feet were soon stayed, and, standing at an abrupt turn of the valley, we were aware of a lonely light agleam in the darkness--the light of the first house we had remarked since our nightmare town. It disappeared ere we reached the threshold. A sign-board flapped uneasily, and we found that our journey was done. It was a vision of gables, with dormers and oriels; immense beams here and there upheld a sodden thatch; the chimney stacks, huddled and incongruously set, gave forth no friendly smoke. With a mad desire to harangue, I ascended the perron-staircase, and grasping its scrolled balustrade, began:--‘Friend Gabriel, who listenest with the night bats and the darkness--what is the soul?’ (Heedless of the pelting rain and Gabriel’s tender lungs: brute that I was!) ‘Nay,’ I continued, ‘rather what is the body? That I can define: husks--husks--a frippery of flesh!’ The light came again, this time at an upper window. I struck the door with my fist; but nobody heeded. A few nights before Gabriel and I had seen a strolling company play _Cymbeline_: so I began to mimic the stentorian voice of the Imogen. The keyhole, which was hard to find, was covered with a stiff and rusty scutcheon, which I had some difficulty in moving. At last, though, I could press my lips to the void, and ‘What, ho, Pisanio!’ I cried. Gabriel was too tired to smile; but footsteps came along the passage, and after a wearisome time the bolts were all undrawn, and the door opened as wide as the chain would run. A harsh and feeble voice came forth upon the night: ‘What do you want?’ ‘Supper and a room,’ I said. Another minute, and we stood in a yellow-washed hall, hung at even distances with dusty stags’-heads. A few paintings of scriptural scenes, done in Guercino’s style and framed in black, were fixed between queer oak carvings, the subjects taken from the superstitions of Holy Church, for in the first I saw Christ, crowned with a great golden aureole, descending a ladder into flames that coiled snake-like about the bottom rungs.