A kitchen candle burned below the hat-rack in the narrow hall, and showed further stains on the oilcloth.From a room on the left hand came the sound of women weeping.
The door at the end of the passage was ajar. It opened on a bare little place, once perhaps the surgery of some doctor in small practice, but now a bedroom.A door gave at the farther side on a tiny verandah, and this and the one window were wide open. An oil lamp stood on a table by the bed and revealed a crowd of people. A man lay on the camp-bed, lying aslant for he was too long for it. A sheet covered his lower limbs,but his breast and shoulders had been bared. The head was nearest to the entrance, propped on an outjutting bolster.