he was to take, he set forth on his homeward journey and walked
on all day with only one stoppage for bread and cheese. Just as
it was getting toward dark, the rain came on and the wind began
to rise, and he found himself, to make matters worse, in a part
of the country with which he was entirely unacquainted, though he
knew himself to be some fifteen miles from home. The first house
he found to inquire at was a lonely roadside inn, standing on the
outskirts of a thick wood. Solitary as the place looked, it was
welcome to a lost man who was also hungry, thirsty, footsore and
wet. The landlord was civil and respectable-looking, and the
price he asked for a bed was reasonable enough. Isaac therefore
decided on stopping comfortably at the inn for that night.

He was constitutionally a temperate man.

His supper consisted of two rashers of bacon, a slice of
home-made bread and a pint of ale. He did not go to bed
immediately after this moderate meal, but sat up with the
landlord, talking about his bad prospects and his long run of
ill-luck, and diverging from these topics to the subjects of
horse-flesh and racing. Nothing was said either by himself, his
host, or the few laborers who strayed into the tap-room, which
could, in the slightest degree, excite the very small and very
dull imaginative faculty which Isaac Scatchard possessed.

At a little after eleven the house was closed. Isaac went round
with the landlord and held the candle while the doors and lower
windows were being secured. He noticed with surprise the strength
of the bolts and bars, and iron-sheathed shutters.