ight from within shining out upon me where I stood, and a battered old
sign groaning and creaking above my head. For me, who in all my life
had been accustomed to find my warmest welcome at an inn, this was to
be at home. I paid my fare, took up my carpet-bag, and entered the
hostelry.

I found a rosy-faced landlady, clean and trim, though a trifle floury
as to the arms and apron. She had emerged from a kitchen, an
old-fashioned chamber with a floor of red brick; a chamber which was
all in a rosy glow with the firelight, and looked like a Dutch picture,
as I peeped at it through the open doorway. There were the most
picturesque of cakes and loaves heaped on a wooden bench by the hearth,
and the whole aspect of the place was delicious in its homely comfort.

"O," I said to myself, "how much better the northern winds blowing over
these untrodden hills, and the odour of home-made loaves, than the
booming bells of St. Dunstan's, and the greasy steam of tavern chops
and steaks!"

My heart warmed to this Yorkshire and these Yorkshire people. Was it
for Charlotte's sake, I wonder, that I was so ready to open my heart to
everybody and everything in this unknown land?

A very brief parley set me quite at ease with my landlady. Even, the
Carthaginian _patois_ became intelligible to me after a little
experience. I found that I could have a cosy, cleanly chamber, and be
fed and cared for upon terms that seemed absurdly small, even to a
person of my limited means. My cordial hostess brought me a meal which
was positively luxurious; broiled ham and poached eggs, such as one
scarcely hopes to see out of a picture of still life; crisp brown cakes
fresh from that wonderful oven whose door I had seen yawning open in
the Flemish interior below; strong tea and cream--the cream that one
reads of in pastoral stories.

I enjoyed my banquet, and then opened my window and looked out at the
still landscape, dimly visible in the faint starlight.

I was at the top of a hill--the topmost of an ascending range of
hills--and to some minds that alone is rapture. To inhale the fresh
night air was to drink deeply of an ethereal beverage. I had never
experienced so delicious a sensation since I had stood on the grassy
battlements of the Chateau d'Arques, with the orchards and gardens of
sunny Normandy spread like a carpet below my feet.

But this hill was loftier than that on which the feudal castle rears
its crumbling towers, and the landscape b