d to straighten himself.
He would walk quickly to warm himself--would go home at once. Home--
what _home_ had he? That great, gaunt Hand of God. He detested it and
all that were within its walls. That was no home. Yet he was walking
briskly towards it, having no other whither to go.

He was in the mean little streets, he was within five minutes of his
goal, when he heard singing. He was passing the same little inn which
he had passed the first night that Westray came. The same voice was
singing inside which had sung the night that Westray came. Westray had
brought discomfort; Westray had brought Lord Blandamer. Things had
never been the same since; he wished Westray had never come at all; he
wished--oh, how he wished!--that all might be as it was before--that all
might jog along quietly as it had for a generation before. She
certainly had a fine voice, this woman. It really would be worth while
seeing who she was; he wished he could just look inside the door. Stay,
he could easily make an excuse for looking in: he would order a little
hot whisky-and-water. He was so wet, it was prudent to take something
to drink. It might ward off a bad chill. He would only take a very
little, and only as a medicine, of course; there could be no harm in
_that_--it was mere prudence.

He took off his hat, shook the rain from it, turned the handle of the
door very gently, with the consideration of a musician who will do
nothing to interrupt another who is making music, and went in.

He found himself in that sanded parlour which he had seen once before
through the window. It was a long, low room, with heavy beams crossing
the roof, and at the end was an open fireplace, where a kettle hung
above a smouldering fire. In a corner sat an old man playing on a
fiddle, and near him the Creole woman stood singing; there were some
tables round the room, and behind them benches on which a dozen men were
sitting. There was no young man among them, and most had long
passed the meridian of life. Their faces were sun-tanned and
mahogany-coloured; some wore earrings in their ears, and strange curls
of grey hair at the side of their heads. They looked as if they might
have been sitting there for years--as if they might be the crew of some
long-foundered vessel to whom has been accorded a Nirvana of endless
tavern-fellowship. None of them took any notice of Mr Sharnall, for
music was exercising its transporting power, and their though