Young Holliday advanced with the candle, and looked in at the man
cautiously.

'How pale he is!' said Arthur.

'Yes,' returned the landlord, 'pale enough, isn't he?'

Arthur looked closer at the man. The bedclothes were drawn up to
his chin, and they lay perfectly still over the region of his
chest. Surprised and vaguely startled, as he noticed this, Arthur
stooped down closer over the stranger; looked at his ashy, parted
lips; listened breathlessly for an instant; looked again at the
strangely still face, and the motionless lips and chest; and turned
round suddenly on the landlord, with his own cheeks as pale for the
moment as the hollow cheeks of the man on the bed.

'Come here,' he whispered, under his breath. 'Come here, for God's
sake! The man's not asleep--he is dead!'

'You have found that out sooner than I thought you would,' said the
landlord, composedly. 'Yes, he's dead, sure enough. He died at
five o'clock to-day.'

'How did he die? Who is he?' asked Arthur, staggered, for a
moment, by the audacious coolness of the answer.

'As to who is he,' rejoined the landlord, 'I know no more about him
than you do. There are his books and letters and things, all
sealed up in that brown-paper parcel, for the Coroner's inquest to