No answer.
I rapped again, and then, finding the door unfastened, I pushed against it with trembling hand to find it yield, and, walking straight in, I turned to the right and entered the little parlour.
As I went in some one who had been sitting back asleep in the easy-chair started up and took a great red handkerchief from his face.
As he did this I was advancing with open hands, but only to stop short, for it was not my father.
“Hillo!” said the stranger, a dirty-looking man with an inflamed nose.
“Hallo!” I said; “who are you?”
“Who am I?” said the stranger, staring at me as if I were asking a most absurd question. “Why, persession—that’s about what I am. Are you come to pay me out?”
“Pay you out!—possession!” I faltered. “Why, what does it mean?”
“Sold by hockshin without reserve by one of the morkygees,” said the man, “soon as the inwintory’s took.”
“Where are my father and mother?” I said, with my heart sinking at the idea of the distress they must have been in.