ain: I had felt sure
the staircase lay to the right. I knew by heart the Ionic pattern of
its broad balusters; the tick of the tall clock, standing at the first
turn of the stairs; the vista down the glazed door opening on the
stable-yard. When the landlord returned with my portmanteau and a
candle and I followed him up-stairs, I was asking myself for the
twentieth time--'When--in what stage of my soul's history--had I been
doing all this before? And what on earth was that tune that kept
humming in my head?'

I dismissed these speculations as I entered the bedroom and began to
fling off my dusty clothes. I had almost forgotten about them by the
time I began to wash away my travel-stains, and rinse the coal-dust out
of my hair. My spirits revived, and I began mentally to arrange my
plans for the next day. The prospect of dinner, too, after my cold
drive was wonderfully comforting. Perhaps (thought I), there is good
wine in this inn; it is just the house wherein travellers find, or boast
that they find, forgotten bins of Burgundy or Teneriffe. When my
landlord returned to conduct me to the Blue Room, I followed him down to
the first landing in the lightest of spirits.

Therefore, I was startled when, as the landlord threw open the door and
stood aside to let me pass, _it_ came upon me again--and this time not
as a merely vague sensation, but as a sharp and sudden fear taking me
like a cold hand by the throat. I shivered as I crossed the threshold
and began to look about me. The landlord observed it, and said--

"It's chilly weather for travelling, to be sure. Maybe you'd be better
down-stairs in the coffee-room, after all."

I felt that this was probable enough. But it seemed a pity to have put
him to the pains of lighting this fire for nothing. So I promised him I
should be comfortable enough.

He appeared to be relieved, and asked me what I would drink with my
dinner. "There's beer--I brew it myself; and sherry--"

I said I would try his beer.

"And a bottle of sound port to follow?"

Port upon home-brewed beer! But I had dared it often enough in my
Oxford days, and a long evening lay before me, with a snug armchair, and
a fire fit to roast a sheep. I assented.

He withdrew to fetch up the meal, and I looked about me with curiosity.
The room was a long one--perhaps fifty feet from end to end, and not
less than ten paces broad. It was wainscotted to the height of four
feet from the ground, pro