alone in this lonely hollow of the moors. We rode soon over level ground; we reached a high stone wall; the rider ahead of us had leaped down and was unlocking an iron gate; we passed through, and the gate crashed to behind us. At a walk now we clattered over cobbles up to the front of the house; I saw the green shining off the curtained window from the grey front of moonlit stone. It was a house of two stories in height, a drear grey house, grey-roofed and over-topped by chimney stacks; looking up I believed that I saw p. 63iron bars before the unshuttered windows. My captor roared out, “Hallo, there!” as we pulled up before the door; and gripping me by my collar lowered me to the ground, dropping down after me, and lugging me with him into the porch. The door opened with a clash and clatter like the iron-bound door of a prison. And blinking for the light from a lantern, I saw peering out a crone, bent nigh double, one skinny claw holding up the lantern, so that it shone upon her shrivelled livid face, her red-lidded, pale green eyes, on her grey hair wind-blown, and the blue shawl she clutched at her throat. I saw her looking malevolently at me, and heard her tittering laughter, as my captor thrust me past her into the house.

p. 63

The door clashed after us. He lugged me through a dark stone hall, and brought me into the green-curtained room; so thick was the air with the smoke of peat and the reek of an oil-lamp that in a moment my eyes were blinded; and I was coughing, choking.

p. 65Chapter VIII. The Green-Curtained Room

p. 65

When my sight cleared, I found myself in a long, low grey room—grey from the smoke and the stone walls. It was lit by a curious hanging lamp of iron, black with soot and oil; a fire of peat smouldered on the deep hearth; for furniture the room had in it a long table black with age, and grease, and oil dribbling from the lamp; heavy black chairs were set on either side of the hearth and at the table, and a black press standing against the wall, its brass fittings green and corroded. The brass candlesticks upon the chimney-piece were green and corroded, too; the curtain drawn before the window was green and moth-eaten; the floor was sanded; the rafters above were black with soot and dusty cobwebs. My captor pulling me forward,—as the old woman waited by the door presently to admit the other rider—dropped me like a sack of meal on to a chair; and straddled before the fire, stretching his arm cramped by the weight of me all that while in saddle.

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