The
night in question was Christmas Eve; the snow had fallen heavily during
the day, and with the wind blowing in icy draughts from the north-east,
there was every prospect of another downfall. Maitland pressed me to
stay in his hotel. 'It is sheer folly,' he said, 'for you to attempt to
get home in weather like this. It is pitch dark, you are not familiar
with the route, and if you don't wander off the track and tumble over a
precipice, you will walk into a snowdrift. Be sensible--sleep here!' "Much, however, as I should have liked to follow his counsel, I did not
feel justified in doing so, as I had a lot of correspondence to attend
to, and I realized it was most necessary for me to get back to Liffre
without any further delay. "It was true the night was inky black; but, with the aid of a lamp, I
hadn't the slightest doubt I could find my way. Maitland bartered for a
candle lantern with his host, and armed with this, a flagon of brandy
and water and a thick stick, I said good-bye to Châteauborne. "A couple of hundred yards saw me beyond the outskirts of the town,
wherein I was the sole pedestrian, and silence reigned supreme. On and
on I plodded, the feeble, yellow light of my lantern just preventing
me--but only just--from wandering from the track. The road, which for
the first mile or so was tolerably level, gradually began to rise, and,
as it did so, I noticed for the first time indistinct images of
gigantic, naked trees that becoming more and more numerous, and closer
and closer together, at length united their long and grotesquely shaped
branches overhead, and I found myself in the depths of a vast forest. The snow, which had up to the present held off, now recommenced to fall,
and presently the wind, which had for some time been slowly acquiring
strength, came howling through the trees with the utmost fury, the first
blast swishing the lantern out of my hands and hurling me with
considerable force into an undergrowth of thorns and brambles, out of
which I extricated myself with no little difficulty. "I was now in the sorriest of plights--enveloped on all sides in Stygian
darkness I was unable to discover my lantern, and was thus totally at
the mercy of the ruthless elements. There were only two courses before
me--either I must remain where I was and be frozen to death, or, making
a guess at the route, I must push on ahead and run the risk of ending my
life at the bottom of a ravine. I chose the latter. Groping about with
my feet, until I at length discovered what I thought must be the right
track, I pushed ahead, and, staggering and stumbling forward, managed to
make some sort of progress, terribly slow though it was. The blinding
darkness of the snowy night, the intense silence and utter solitude of
the place, combined with the knowledge that on all sides of me lay holes
and chasms, dampened my spirits and raised strange phantoms in my
imagination. The wind now rose, and the dismal sighing of the trees
speedily grew into a series of the most perturbing screeches, as the
branches and trunks swayed to and fro like reeds before the violence of
the hurricane. "At this juncture I gave myself up for lost, and, coming to a standstill
up to my knees in snow, was preparing to lie down and die, when, to my
great joy, a light suddenly appeared ahead of me, and the next moment a
man, mounted on a big white horse, rode noiselessly up to me. He was
wrapped in a shaggy great-coat, and a slouch hat worn low over his eyes
completely hid his face from me. In his disengaged hand he carried a
lantern. "'By Jove!' I exclaimed, 'I am glad to see you, for I've lost the track
to Liffre. Can you tell me, or, better still, show me, the way to some
house where I can put up for the remainder of the night?' "The stranger made no reply, but bidding me follow with a wave of his
hand, rode silently in front of me, and although I tried to keep up with
him, I could not; and the odd thing was, that without apparently
increasing his pace, he always maintained his distance. After proceeding
in this manner for possibly ten minutes, we suddenly turned to the left,
and I found myself in a big clearing in the wood, with a long, low-built
house opposite me. "My guide then paused, and indicating the front door of the house with
an emphatic gesture of his hand, seemed suddenly to melt away into thin
air, for although I peered about me on all sides to try to find some
indications of him, neither he nor his horse was anywhere to be seen. Thinking this was rather queer, but quite ready to attribute it to
natural causes, I approached the building, and, making use of my
knuckles in lieu of a knocker, beat a loud tattoo on the woodwork. There
was no response. Again I rapped, and the door slowly opening revealed a
pair of gleaming, dark eyes. 'What do you want?' enquired a harsh voice
in barbarous accents. 'A night's lodging,' I replied; 'and I'm willing
to pay a good price for it, for I'm more than half frozen.' "At this the door opened wider, and I found myself confronted by a woman
with a candle. She had not the most prepossessing of expressions, though
her hair, eyes and features were decidedly good. She was dressed with
tawdry smartness--earrings, necklace, and rings, and very high-heeled
buckle shoes. Indeed, her costume was so out of keeping with the
rusticity of her surroundings as to be quite extraordinary. This fact
struck me at once, as did her fingers, which, though spatulate and ugly,
had been manicured, and of course very much over-manicured, for effect. Had this not been the case, I probably should not have noticed them. But
the unnatural gloss on them, exaggerated by the candlelight, made me
look, and I was at once impressed with the criminal formation of the
fingers--the club-shaped ends denoted something very bad--something
homicidal--and as my eyes wandered from the hands to the face, I saw
with a thrill of horror that the ears were set low down and far back on
the head, and that the eyes gleamed with the sinister glitter of the
wolf. "Still, I must take my chance--the woman or the wood--it had to be one
of the two. 'If you'll step inside, monsieur,' she said, 'I'll see what
can be done for you. We have only recently come here, and the house is
anyhow at present. Still, if you don't mind roughing it a little, we can
let you have a bed, and you can rely upon me that it is clean and
well-aired.' I followed her eagerly, and she led me down a narrow
passage into a big room with a low ceiling, traversed with a ponderous
oak beam, blackened with the smoke of endless peat fires. "Before the blazing faggots on the hearth sat a burly-looking individual
in a blue blouse. On our arrival he arose, and as his huge form towered
above me, I thought I had never seen anyone quite so hideous, nor so
utterly unlike the orthodox Frenchman.