rotector, had
vanished up the dark stairs of the house, following a stout, youngish
woman in a white apron, who bore a candle. Jos Myatt, behind, said to
me: "Happen you'd better go in there, mester," pointing to a half-open
door at the foot of the stairs. I went into a little room at the rear of
the bar-parlour. A good fire burned in a small old-fashioned grate, but
there was no other light. The inn was closed to customers, it being past
eleven o'clock. On a bare table I perceived a candle, and ventured to
put a match to it. I then saw almost exactly such a room as one would
expect to find at the rear of the bar-parlour of an inn on the outskirts
of an industrial town. It appeared to serve the double purpose of a
living-room and of a retreat for favoured customers. The table was
evidently one at which men drank. On a shelf was a row of bottles, more
or less empty, bearing names famous in newspaper advertisements and in
the House of Lords. The dozen chairs suggested an acute bodily
discomfort such as would only be tolerated by a sitter all of whose
sensory faculties were centred in his palate. On a broken chair in a
corner was an insecure pile of books. A smaller table was covered with a
chequered cloth on which were a few plates. Along one wall, under the
window, ran a pitch-pine sofa upholstered with a stuff slightly
dissimilar from that on the table. The mattress of the sofa was uneven
and its surface wrinkled, and old newspapers and pieces of brown paper
had been stowed away between it and the framework. The chief article of
furniture was an effective walnut bookcase, the glass doors of which
were curtained with red cloth. The window, wider than it was high, was
also curtained with red cloth. The walls, papered in a saffron tint,
bore framed advertisements and a few photographs of self-conscious
persons. The ceiling was as obscure as heaven; the floor tiled, with a
list rug in front of the steel fender.

I put my overcoat on the sofa, picked up the candle and glanced at the
books in the corner: Lavater's indestructible work, a paper-covered
_Whitaker_, the _Licensed Victuallers' Almanac, Johnny Ludlow_, the
illustrated catalogue of the Exhibition of 1856, _Cruden's Concordance_,
and seven or eight volumes of _Knight's Penny Encyclopaedia_. While I was
poring on these titles I heard movements overhead--previously there had
been no sound whatever--and with guilty haste I restored the candle to
the table and placed mys