It was fortunate for me that I had to take precautions to ensure (so far
as I could) the safety of my dreaded visitor; for, this thought pressing
on me when I awoke, held other thoughts in a confused concourse at a
distance.

The impossibility of keeping him concealed in the chambers was
self-evident. It could not be done, and the attempt to do it would
inevitably engender suspicion. True, I had no Avenger in my service now,
but I was looked after by an inflammatory old female, assisted by an
animated rag-bag whom she called her niece, and to keep a room secret
from them would be to invite curiosity and exaggeration. They both had
weak eyes, which I had long attributed to their chronically looking in
at keyholes, and they were always at hand when not wanted; indeed that
was their only reliable quality besides larceny. Not to get up a mystery
with these people, I resolved to announce in the morning that my uncle
had unexpectedly come from the country.

This course I decided on while I was yet groping about in the darkness
for the means of getting a light. Not stumbling on the means after all,
I was fain to go out to the adjacent Lodge and get the watchman there to
come with his lantern. Now, in groping my way down the black staircase I
fell over something, and that something was a man crouching in a corner.