Alone, even, I felt uncomfortable, this seemed so sinister a business, and so ill begun. I was in the house. But Madame’s frank voice haunted me, and the dumb man’s eyes, full of suspicion and menace. When I presently got up and tried my door, I found it locked. The room smelt dank and close--like a vault. I could not see through the barred window, but I could hear the boughs sweep it in ghostly fashion; and I guessed that it looked out where the wood grew close to the walls of the house, and that even in the day the sun never peeped through it. Nevertheless, tired and worn out, I slept at last. When I awoke the room was full of grey light, the door stood open, and Louis, looking ashamed of himself, waited by my pallet with a cup of wine in his hand, and some bread and fruit on a platter. ‘Will Monsieur be good enough to rise?’ he said. ‘It is eight o’clock.’ ‘Willingly,’ I answered tartly. ‘Now that the door is unlocked.’ He turned red. ‘It was an oversight,’ he stammered ‘Clon is accustomed to lock the door, and he did it inadvertently, forgetting that there was anyone--’ ‘Inside,’ I said drily. ‘Precisely, Monsieur.’ ‘Ah!’ I replied. ‘Well, I do not think the oversight would please Madame de Cocheforet if she heard of it?’ ‘If Monsieur would have the kindness not to--’ ‘Mention it, my good fellow?’ answered, looking at him with meaning as I rose. ‘No. But it must not occur again.’ I saw that this man was not like Clon. He had the instincts of the family servant, and freed from the influences of fear and darkness felt ashamed of his conduct. While he arranged my clothes, he looked round the room with an air of distaste, and muttered once or twice that the furniture of the principal chambers was packed away. ‘M. de Cocheforet is abroad, I think?’ I said as I dressed. ‘And likely to remain there,’ the man answered carelessly, shrugging his shoulders. ‘Monsieur will doubtless have heard that he is in trouble. In the meantime, the house is TRISTE, and Monsieur must overlook much, if he stays. Madame lives retired, and the roads are ill-made and visitors few.’ ‘When the lion was ill the jackals left him,’ I said. Louis nodded. ‘It is true,’ he answered simply. He made no boast or brag on his own account, I noticed; and it came home to me that he was a faithful fellow, such as I love. I questioned him discreetly, and learned that he and Clon and an older man who lived over the stables were the only male servants left of a great household. Madame, her sister-in-law, and three women completed the family.