The grey light of the skies showed us at last a great square opening before us, with a lofty stone building like a war tower rising dark in the midst. We stopped at an inn door in this square, and descended, the opera-box making a vigorous plunge to assist us in the operation. Repeated pulls at a cracked bell, which sounded dismally in some remote depth of the old house, eventually produced the effect desired, for a rattling of chains was heard, and then the heavy door swung slowly on its hinges, sufficiently to admit of the protrusion of a man's head. The head came out as far as the shoulders, and nothing more ghastly could be conceived, as for a few seconds it remained there motionless and isolated against the black background, like the decapitated skull of some malefactor nailed to a gibbet, the face gleaming deadly in the uncertain night-light. The dreary silence of the dark square was broken only by the lonely cry of some distant watchman, pacing the old streets here and there with a dull lamp, which served to deepen still more the darkness beyond, whilst, high, gaunt, and spectral against the dull grey air, loomed the fortress-like building. A gigantic lighted clock was poised on a high tower, the long hands thereof making great leaps of five minutes each along the dial, as if it were dozing, and then suddenly waking and making up for lost time by desperate strides. In fact, to anyone who had recently supped upon pork chops, or to the cheerful mind of the late lamented Mrs. Anne Radcliffe, of raw-head-and-bare-bones memory, this old tower and its clock might have appeared as the Ogre Time, or some huge Cyclopean ghoul of night, watching and gloating, with its burning eye, over the surely passing hours of the thousand slumberers lying for a season sweetly unconscious of the fleeting of life beneath, and counting each heave of breath which as it passes must bring all nearer and nearer to its maw.