‘No,’ said the weird old man, ‘there is no one there.’
Mr. Goodchild looked at Idle, but Idle lay with his head enwreathed in smoke.
‘No one there?’ said Goodchild.
‘There is no one at your grave, I assure you,’ said the old man.
He had come in and shut the door, and he now sat down. He did not bend himself to sit, as other people do, but seemed to sink bolt upright, as if in water, until the chair stopped him.
‘My friend, Mr. Idle,’ said Goodchild, extremely anxious to introduce a third person into the conversation.
‘I am,’ said the old man, without looking at him, ‘at Mr. Idle’s service.’
‘If you are an old inhabitant of this place,’ Francis Goodchild resumed.
‘Yes.’
‘Perhaps you can decide a point my friend and I were in doubt upon, this morning. They hang condemned criminals at the Castle, I believe?’