“The Listeners” by Walter De La Mare Summary Analysis:
A traveler came on horse back to a deserted house in a deep forest. He knocked on its closed moonlit door and asked if there was anybody in it. His horse went on clamping the grass and a bird flew out to the turret of the house, but there was perfect silence in it.
The traveler’s second knock with a similar question went unheeded too. For no one looked out of the leaf-fringed window sill to enquire who had come. The house was inhabited by phantoms and they heard the traveler’s voice. The traveler perplexed an still. The traveler felt in his heart the strangeness and stillness of the phantoms suggested the character of the house. He smote on the door a third time and said in a louder voice that he came but no one answered to his call and that he kept his word. The phantoms made no stir and so the traveler got upon his horse and left there.
