The kindly figure of the gentle, loving, saintly old man passed out into the darkness again. The woman slammed the door and bolted it heavily when the Charnetskis—now the Kovalskis—Johann Tring, and the dog were inside. “At last,” said Pan Andrew, “we are at home.” They passed through the passage with its pointed arches and emerged into the court, the woman leading the way with her lantern. Here Tring bade them good night and went to his room on the right-hand side of the court. Joseph felt at parting from him something of the same dislike that he had experienced when the lantern light had fallen upon his face in the street; the face was one that might easily come to haunt a man in his dreams, and yet it was in daylight but an ordinary face, like that of a thousand other students, who possessed neither the gift of beauty nor the curse of ugliness—yet in that yellow gleam of the lantern there had been upon the features some indefinable threat of malignity. The woman led them to the stairway on the left. As they ascended these same stairs that Joseph had climbed earlier in the day, the whole staircase seemed even more shaky and rickety than it had appeared in the light of day. The woman moved ahead of them freely, but Pan Andrew and his wife and Joseph clung to the railing as if for protection in case the boards should fall away beneath their feet. At the first landing the door stood open. Out from this door came the welcome beam of a candle, lighted by the hands of Elzbietka Kreutz. The father with this candle in his hand at once inspected the little quarters. There were but two rooms, one of them fortunately large and of good shape, so that while one end of it must serve as a bedroom for Pan Andrew and his wife, there was ample room at the other end for the general living quarters of the family. The smaller room at the back Joseph would sleep in. The woman who had opened the door had been busy all the evening preparing the place for occupancy, expending some of the money which Pan Andrew had given her, for bare necessities, a rug, wooden eating utensils, chairs, and beds. He had left his name as Andrew Kovalski with the woman, the name which had been agreed upon with Jan Kanty, a name in itself one of the most common, since it signified a smith—and the alchemist and his niece having been advised of the kinship with the Tenczynskis, willingly pledged silence concerning the true name.