ot even Midwinter's nervous
watchfulness could see anything to distrust, it was still to proceed,
until the night came--a night which one at least of the two companions
was destined to remember to the end of his life.

Before the travelers had advanced two miles on their road, an accident
happened. The horse fell, and the driver reported that the animal had
seriously injured himself. There was no alternative but to send for
another carriage to Castletown, or to get on to Port St. Mary on foot.

Deciding to walk, Midwinter and Allan had not gone far before they were
overtaken by a gentleman driving alone in an open chaise. He civilly
introduced himself as a medical man, living close to Port St. Mary, and
offered seats in his carriage. Always ready to make new acquaintances,
Allan at once accepted the proposal. He and the doctor (whose name was
ascertained to be Hawbury) became friendly and familiar before they
had been five minutes in the chaise together; Midwinter, sitting behind
them, reserved and silent, on the back seat. They separated just outside
Port St. Mary, before Mr. Hawbury's house, Allan boisterously admiring
the doctor's neat French windows and pretty flower-garden and lawn,
and wringing his hand at parting as if they had known each other
from boyhood upward. Arrived in Port St. Mary, the two friends found
themselves in a second Castletown on a smaller scale. But the country
round, wild, open, and hilly, deserved its reputation. A walk brought
them well enough on with the day--still the harmless, idle day that it
had been from the first--to see the evening near at hand. After waiting
a little to admire the sun, setting grandly over hill, and heath, and
crag, and talking, while they waited, of Mr. Brock and his long journey
home, they returned to the hotel to order their early supper. Nearer and
nearer the night, and the adventure which the night was to bring with
it, came to the two friends; and still the only incidents that happened
were incidents to be laughed at, if they were noticed at all. The
supper was badly cooked; the waiting-maid was impenetrably stupid; the
old-fashioned bell-rope in the coffee-room had come down in Allan's
hands, and, striking in its descent a painted china shepherdess on the
chimney-piece, had laid the figure in fragments on the floor. Events as
trifling as these were still the only events that had happened, when the
twilight faded, and the lighted candles were brought into the