mless slumber.

Madame awoke me at last, in a huge fuss. She had got out all our things and
hurried them away to a close carriage which was awaiting us. It was still
dark and starless. We got along the platform, I half asleep, the porter
carrying our rugs, by the glare of a pair of gas-jets in the wall, and out
by a small door at the end.

I remember that Madame, contrary to her wont, gave the man some money. By
the puzzling light of the carriage-lamps we got in and took our seats.

'Go on,' screamed Madame, and drew up the window with a great chuck; and we
were enclosed in darkness and silence, the most favourable conditions for
thought.

My sleep had not restored me as it might; I felt feverish, fatigued, and
still very drowsy, though unable to sleep as I had done.

I dozed by fits and starts, and lay awake, or half-awake, sometimes, not
thinking but in a way imagining what kind of a place Dover would be; but
too tired and listless to ask Madame any questions, and merely seeing the
hedges, grey in the lamplight, glide backward into darkness, as I leaned
back.

We turned off the main road, at right angles, and drew up.

'Get down and poosh it, it is open,' screamed Madame from the window.

A gate, I suppose, was thus passed; for when we resumed our brisk trot,
Madame bawled across the carriage--

'We are now in the 'otel grounds.'

And so all again was darkness and silence, and I fell into another doze,
from which, on waking, I found that we had come to a standstill, and Madame
was standing on the low step of an open door, paying the driver. She,
herself, pulled her box and the bag in. I was too tired to care what had
become of the rest of our luggage.

I descended, glancing to the right and left, but there was nothing visible
but a patch of light from the lamps on a paved ground and on the wall.

We stepped into the hall or vestibule, and Madame shut the door, and I
thought I heard the key turn in it. We were in total darkness.

'Where are the lights, Madame--where are the people?' I asked, more awake
than I had been.

''Tis pass three o'clock, cheaile, bote there is always light here.' She
was groping at the side; and in a moment more lighted a lucifer match, and
so a bedroom candle.

We were in a flagged lobby, under an archway at the right, and at the left
of which opened long flagged passages, lost in darkness; a winding stair,
barely wide enough to admit Madame, dragging her box, led upward under