tongs upon the hearth, a straddling giant with his arms a-kimbo,
evidently smelling the blood of Englishmen, and wanting to grind
people's bones to make his bread.

When these shadows brought into the minds of older people, other
thoughts, and showed them different images. When they stole from
their retreats, in the likenesses of forms and faces from the past,
from the grave, from the deep, deep gulf, where the things that
might have been, and never were, are always wandering.

When he sat, as already mentioned, gazing at the fire. When, as it
rose and fell, the shadows went and came. When he took no heed of
them, with his bodily eyes; but, let them come or let them go,
looked fixedly at the fire. You should have seen him, then.

When the sounds that had arisen with the shadows, and come out of
their lurking-places at the twilight summons, seemed to make a
deeper stillness all about him. When the wind was rumbling in the
chimney, and sometimes crooning, sometimes howling, in the house.
When the old trees outside were so shaken and beaten, that one
querulous old rook, unable to sleep, protested now and then, in a
feeble, dozy, high-up "Caw!" When, at intervals, the window
trembled, the rusty vane upon the turret-top complained, the clock
beneath it recorded that another quarter of an hour was gone, or
the fire collapsed and fell in with a rattle.

- When a knock came at his door, in short, as he was sitting so,
and roused him.

"Who's that?" said he. "Come in!"