The speaker passes a ruined tavern and feels an involuntary dread: the weeds, torn curtains, and broken glass make the place seem haunted, and his face stiffens as if the murdered owner, Ham Amory, were staring back at him with dead, glazed eyes. The first stanza turns decay into a ghost story, with the building itself holding the memory of violence.
The second stanza withholds any clear explanation. Everyone knows something happened there long after midnight, but no one can tell the full story. All that survives is a fragment: a stranger riding hard from Tilbury Town, nearly trampling John Evereldown, a local man known for chasing women. Robinson leaves the murder unexplained and the town’s secrets half-buried, creating a mood that is tense, eerie, and quietly sinister.