Here two raps.
“We will, sir.”
Here a single sharp rap and silence.
“Mr. Bunkle,” said Sir John, smiling, “we thank you, and I can promise that you will find us very quiet lodgers—full of sympathy and understanding.”
“Why, then, gen’elmen, if ye’ll trouble to step this way, my mist’us will show ye your rooms.”
CHAPTER XXIV
OF MR. BUNKLE AND THE ROOM WITH FIVE DOORS
Ten o’clock was striking, and the old Cross, deserted and solitary, looked down upon a silent village; and Sir John Dering, leaning out from his open lattice, looked down upon the old Cross. Alfriston slept, and had done so for an hour or more apparently, like the highly decorous community it was; not a footfall disturbed its chaste silence, not a light glimmered anywhere.
A mournful wind moaned in fitful gusts, the signboard of ‘The Star,’ farther down the street, creaked dismally, but, save for this, all was brooding peace and reposeful silence.
But presently Sir John’s quick ear distinguished a sound not of the wind, though like the wind fitful—a faint throb of galloping hoofs, now lost, now heard again, growing ever louder; on they came, nearer and nearer, until the dark street rang and echoed, but never a door opened, never a light blinked, not even when they slowed to a trot, to an amble, to a walk, and finally stopped outside the inn of the ‘Market Cross’; Alfriston slept on serenely persistent.