ere alone in the night? We passed
another cross standing up with its outstretched arms like a soul in
pain. At last a heavier night rose before me, and presently I saw a
great stone arch. Passing beneath it, I found myself immediately in the
town.

The street was tortuous and narrow, paved with rough cobbles; and it
rose steeply, so that the porter bent lower beneath his burden, panting.
With the bag on his shoulders he looked like some hunchbacked gnome, a
creature of nightmare. On either side rose tall houses, lying crooked
and irregular, leaning towards one another at the top, so that one could
not see the clouds, and their windows were great, black apertures like
giant mouths. There was not a light, not a soul, not a sound--except
that of my own feet and the heavy panting of the porter. We wound
through the streets, round corners, through low arches, a long way up
the steep cobbles, and suddenly down broken steps. They hurt my feet,
and I stumbled and almost fell, but the hunchback walked along nimbly,
hurrying ever. Then we came into an open space, and the wind caught us
again, and blew through our clothes, so that I shrank up, shivering. And
never a soul did we see as we walked on; it might have been a city of
the dead. Then past a tall church: I saw a carved porch, and from the
side grim devils grinning down upon me; the porter dived through an
arch, and I groped my way along a narrow passage. At length he stopped,
and with a sigh threw down the bag. He beat with his fists against an
iron door, making the metal ring. A window above was thrown open, and a
voice cried out. The porter answered; there was a clattering down the
stairs, an unlocking, and the door was timidly held open, so that I saw
a woman, with the light of her candle throwing a strange yellow glare on
her face.

And so I arrived at the hotel of Xiormonez.

II

My night was troubled by the ghostly crying of the watchman: 'Protect
us, Mary, Queen of Heaven; protect us, Mary!' Every hour it rang out
stridently as soon as the heavy bells of the cathedral had ceased their
clanging, and I thought of the woman kneeling at the cross, and wondered
if her soul had found peace.

In the morning I threw open the windows and the sun came dancing in,
flooding the room with gold. In front of me the great wall of the
cathedral stood grim and grey, and the gargoyles looked savagely across
the square.... The cathedral is admirable; when you enter you find
you