t as the walls about me, stood round
the comfort of the fire. I saw that the windows were deeper than a man's
arms could reach, and wedge-shaped--made for fighting. I saw that the
beams of the high roof, which the firelight hardly caught, were black
oak and squared enormously, like the ribs of a master-galley, and in the
leaves and garden things that hung from them, in the mighty stones of
the wall, and the beaten earth of the floor, the strong simplicity of
our past, and the promise of our endurance, came upon me.

The peasants sitting about the board and fire had risen, looking at the
door; for strangers were rare, and it was very late as I came out of the
empty cold into that human room. Their dress was ancestral; the master,
as he spoke to me, mixed new words with old. He had phrases that the
Black Prince used when he went riding at arms across the Margeride. He
spoke also of modern things, of the news in the valley from which I had
come, and the railway and Puy below us. They put before me bread and
wine, which I most needed. I sat right up against the blaze. We all
talked high together of the things we knew. For when I had told them
what news there was in the valley, they also answered my questions, into
which I wove as best I could those still living ancient words I had
caught from their mouths. I asked them whose was that great tomb under
the moonlight, at which I had shuddered as I entered their doors. They
told me it was Duguesclin's tomb; for he got his death-wound here under
the walls of the town above them five hundred years ago, and in this
house he had died. Then I asked what stream that was which trickled from
the half-frozen moss, and led down the valley of my next day's journey.
They told me it was called the River Red-cap, and they said that it was
Faery. I asked them also what was the name of the height over which I
had come; they answered, that the shepherds called it "The King's
House," and that hence, in clear weather, under an eastern wind, one
could see far off, beyond the Velay, that lonely height which is called
"The Chair of God."

So we talked together, drinking wine and telling each other of many
things, I of the world to which I was compelled to return, and they of
the pastures and the streams, and all the story of Lozere. And, all the
while, not the antiquity alone, but the endurance of Christendom poured
into me from every influence around.

They rose to go to the homes which were thei