anxious hospitality, as if I were the first guest he had entertained for
many years.

"You received my letter, then?" I asked.

"Yes, surely. The Rev. S. Wraxall, I suppose. Your bed's aired, sir,
and a fire in the Blue Room, and the cloth laid. My wife didn't like to
risk cooking the fowl till you were really come. 'Railways be that
uncertain,' she said. 'Something may happen to the train and he'll be
done to death and all in pieces.'"

It took me a couple of seconds to discover that these gloomy
anticipations referred not to me but to the fowl.

"But if you can wait half an hour--" he went on.

"Certainly," said I. "In the meanwhile, if you'll show me up to my
bedroom, I'll have a wash and change my clothes, for I've been
travelling since ten this morning."

I was standing in the passage by this time, and examined it in the dusk
while the landlord was fetching a candle. Yes, again: 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?'