On singing nights the room grew hot, and the steam stood so thick on the glass inside that one could not see in; but at other times, when there was no company, I have peeped through the red curtains and watched Elzevir Block and Ratsey playing backgammon at the trestle-table by the fire.

It was on the trestle-table that Block had afterwards laid out his son's dead body, and some said they had looked through the window at night and seen the father trying to wash the blood-matting out of the boy's yellow hair, and heard him groaning and talking to the lifeless clay as if it could understand.

Anyhow, there had been little drinking in the inn since that time, for Block grew more and more silent and morose.

He had never courted customers, and now he scowled on any that came, so that men looked on the Why Not?
as a blighted spot, and went to drink at the Three Choughs at Ringstave.
My heart was in my mouth when Ratsey lifted the latch and led me into the inn parlour.

It was a low sanded room with no light except a fire of seawood on the hearth, burning clear and lambent with blue salt flames.
There were tables at each end of the room, and wooden-seated chairs round the walls, and at the trestle table by the chimney sat Elzevir Block smoking a long pipe and looking at the fire.