Clementina

house. It was not only the sign-board which had been newly painted, for in the narrow passage the landlord stopped Wogan. " Have a care, sir," said he; " the walls are wet. It will be best if you stand still while I go forward and bring a light." He went forward in the dark and opened a door at the end of the passage. A glow of ruddy light came through the doorway, and Wogan caught a glimpse of a brick-floored kitchen and a great open chimney and one or two men on a bench before the fire. Then the door was again closed. The closing of the door seemed to Wogan a churlish act. " The hospitality," said he to himself, " which plants a man in the road so that a traveller on a rainy night may not miss his bed should at least leave the kitchen door open. Why should I stay here in the dark? " Wogan went forward, and from the careful way in which he walked, ? a way so careful and stealthy indeed that his footsteps made no sound, ? it might have been inferred that he believed thefloor to be newly painted too. He had, at all events, no such scruples about the kitchen door, for he seized the handle and flung it open quickly. He was met at once by a cold draught of wind. A door opposite and giving onto a yard at the back had been opened at precisely the same moment; and as Wogan stepped quickly in at his door a man stepped quickly out by the door opposite and was lost in the darkness. "What! Are you going?" the landlord cried after him as he turned from th...