Now, so spent with cold and emotion was the boy that his brain was insensible to any impressions save those of his own weariness; wherefore he took but little notice of the novel matters about him, but only obeyed blindly when he was directed up a flight of stairs into a comfortable chamber, where a meal lay ready spread on a table, and a good sea-coal fire burned in the hearth. He ate and drank as he was told, asking no questions and being put none, while Master Clerivault, appearing after attending to the horses, waited on him and his uncle. There seemed a mystery and a silence about everything--the place, the hour, the company he was in--and those, combining with the warmth and animal comfort, so operated upon his senses that in the midst of the meal he fell fast asleep, and thereafter remembered nothing more till he awoke to sunlight in a little room. He sat up in his bed, dazed for a moment, and then recollection rushed upon him in a flood, and he sank back again overwhelmed; when, lying so, with his eyes closed, presently he heard a footstep enter the room, and, without moving, raised his lids just so as to peer under them at the intruder. It was Master Clerivault, come in with a pile of clothes, which it seemed he had been brushing and folding, and these he proceeded to lay out ready, glancing in the act at the sleeper, as he thought him, and afterwards going soft-footed about the room, to open the casement and prepare the ewer for washing. Now curiosity, ever the main tonic of youth, began to stir powerfully in the boy, stimulated, no doubt, by the fresh sunlight, and the unwonted sights and sounds about him; for with the opening of the window had risen a noise of cheery gossip and the stamping of horses from the yard below. So, widening his eyes, he took interested stock of this individual, who had so unexpectedly returned upon him out of the past. That past had been nine years ago, and without question the mental enlargement of the interval spoke in his new observation; for Master Clerivault did not seem to him at all what he had thought he remembered him to be. It was not that he looked older, for in fact he did not by a day; it was a question of the moral impression. The pale staring eyes appeared now a little mad; the grotesque weakness of the face, with its hanging underlip and its long nose dividing the sardonic moustache, was its definite feature; what had figured for martial in him suggested somehow the showy fustian of the stage. And yet, through all, his aspect was likeable, and such as seemed to invite confidences without fear of a rebuff. Watching him a moment, Brion spoke:-- ‘Where am I, Master Clerivault?’ The intruder started, turned round, advanced with a mincing step, and leaning gracefully against the bedpost, one arm akimbo, answered in that queer rusty hinge voice of his:-- ‘In a room of the _Cock_ tavern, Sir, in Westminster town.’