With his taste for fictitious horrors, usually indulged in, however, by his own warm fireside, he found the present time and place slightly disquieting; and then Bill's singular and erratic behavior had rather weakened his nerve.

From under knitted brows he gazed into the room.

The storm rattled the shuttered windows above his head, the dingy sign creaked on its rusty fastenings, and with each fresh gust the bracketed lamps rocked gently to and fro, and as they rocked their trembling shadows slid back and forth along the walls.
The very air of the place was inhospitable, forbidding, and Mr.
Shrimplin was strongly inclined to close the door and beat a hasty retreat.
Still peering down the narrow room with its sagging shelves and littered counters, he crossed the threshold.

Now he could see the office, a space partitioned off at the rear of the building and having a glass front that gave into the store itself.

Here, as he knew, stood Mr.McBride's big iron safe, and here was the high desk, his heavy ledgers--row after row of them; these histories of commerce covered almost the entire period during which men had bought and sold in Mount Hope.
A faint light burned beyond the dirty glass partition, but the tall meager form of the old merchant was nowhere visible.