rid of them? He had
given Ursus a lease. What a blessing if he could free himself from it!
How should he set to work to drive them out?

Suddenly the door of the inn resounded with one of those tumultuous
knocks which in England announces "Somebody." The gamut of knocking
corresponds with the ladder of hierarchy.

It was not quite the knock of a lord; but it was the knock of a justice.

The trembling innkeeper half opened his window. There was, indeed, the
magistrate. Master Nicless perceived at the door a body of police, from
the head of which two men detached themselves, one of whom was the
justice of the quorum.

Master Nicless had seen the justice of the quorum that morning, and
recognized him.

He did not know the other, who was a fat gentleman, with a
waxen-coloured face, a fashionable wig, and a travelling cloak. Nicless
was much afraid of the first of these persons, the justice of the
quorum. Had he been of the court, he would have feared the other most,
because it was Barkilphedro.

One of the subordinates knocked at the door again violently.

The innkeeper, with great drops of perspiration on his brow, from
anxiety, opened it.

The justice of the quorum, in the tone of a man who is employed in
matters of police, and who is well acquainted with various shades of
vagrancy, raised his voice, and asked, severely, for

"Master Ursus!"

The host, cap in hand, replied,--

"Your honour; he lives here."

"I know it," said the justice.

"No doubt, your honour."

"Tell him to come down."

"Your honour, he is not here."

"Where is he?"

"I do not know."

"How is that?"

"He has not come in."

"Then he must have gone out very early?"

"No; but he went out very late."

"What vagabonds!" replied the justice.

"Your honour," said Master Nicless, softly, "here he comes."

Ursus, indeed, had just come in sight, round a turn of the wall. He was
returning to the inn. He had passed nearly the whole night between the
jail, where at midday he had seen Gwynplaine, and the cemetery, where at
midnight he had heard the grave filled up. He was pallid with two
pallors--that of sorrow and of twilight.

Dawn, which is light in a chrysalis state, leaves even those forms which
are in movement in the uncertainty of night. Ursus, wan and indistinct,
walked slowly, like a man in a dream. In the wild distraction produced
by agony of mind, he had left the inn with his head bare. He had not
even found out that he