The Man in Black

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Weyman Stanley John. The Man in Black

CHAPTER I. The Fair At Fécamp

CHAPTER II. SOLOMON NÔTREDAME

CHAPTER III. MAN AND WIFE

CHAPTER IV. THE HOUSE WITH TWO DOORS

CHAPTER V. THE UPPER PORTAL

CHAPTER VI. THE POWDER OF ATTRACTION

CHAPTER VII. CLYTÆMNESTRA

CHAPTER VIII. THE MARK OF CAIN

CHAPTER IX. BEFORE THE COURT

CHAPTER X. TWO WITNESSES

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A little later that night, at the hour which saw the showman pay his second visit to the street before the Chariot d'Or, there to stand gaping at the lighted windows, and peering into the courtyard in a kind of fascination-or perhaps to assure himself that the house would not fly away, and his golden hopes with it-the twelve-year-old boy, the basis of those hopes, awoke and stirred restlessly in the straw. He was cold, and the chain galled him. His face ached where the man had struck him. In the next stall two drunken men were fighting, and the place reeked with oaths and foulness. But none of these things were so novel as to keep the boy awake; and sighing and drawing the monkey nearer to him, he would in a moment have been asleep again if the moon, shining with great brightness through the little square aperture above him, had not thrown its light directly on his head, and roused him more completely.

He sat up and gazed at it, and God knows what softening thoughts and pitiful recollections the beauty of the night brought into his mind; but presently he began to weep-not as a child cries, with noise and wailing, but in silence, as a man weeps. The monkey awoke and crept into his breast, but he hardly regarded it. The misery, the hopelessness, the slavery of his life, ignored from hour to hour, or borne at other times with a boy's nonchalance, filled his heart to bursting now. Crouching in his lair in the straw, he shook with agony. The tears welled up, and would not be restrained, until they hid the face of the sky and darkened even the moon's pure light.

.....

Introduced to the public room, which was over the great stone porch and happened to be empty, the traveller lost none of his singularity. He paused a little way within the door, and stood as if suddenly fallen into deep thought. The landlord, beginning to think him mad, ventured to recall him by asking what his honour would take.

"There is something amiss in this house," the stranger replied abruptly, turning his eyes on him.

.....