of the
country than had been my share since boyhood, and for that reason, or
because I had no great taste for the task before me--the task now
so imminent--I felt a little hipped. In good faith, it was not a
gentleman's work that I was come to do, look at it how you might.

But beggars must not be choosers, and I knew that this feeling would
not last. At the inn, in the presence of others, under the spur of
necessity, or in the excitement of the chase, were that once begun, I
should lose the feeling. When a man is young he seeks solitude, when he
is middle-aged, he flies it and his thoughts. I made therefore for the
'Green Pillar,' a little inn in the village street, to which I had been
directed at Auch, and, thundering on the door with the knob of my riding
switch, railed at the man for keeping me waiting.

Here and there at hovel doors in the street--which was a mean,
poor place, not worthy of the name--men and women looked out at me
suspiciously. But I affected to ignore them; and at last the host came.
He was a fair-haired man, half-Basque, half-Frenchman, and had scanned
me well, I was sure, through some window or peephole; for when he came
out he betrayed no surprise at the sight of a well-dressed stranger--a
portent in that out-of-the-way village--but eyed me with a kind of
sullen reserve.

'I can lie here to-night, I suppose?' I said, dropping the reins on the
sorrel's neck. The horse hung its head.

'I don't know,' he answered stupidly.

I pointed to the green bough which topped a post that stood opposite the
door.

'This is an inn, is it not?' I said.

'Yes,' he answered slowly. 'It is an inn. But--'

'But you are full, or you are out of food, or your wife is ill, or
something else is amiss,' I answered peevishly. 'All the same, I am
going to lie here. So you must make the best of it, and your wife
too--if you have one.'

He scratched his head, looking at me with an ugly glitter in his eyes.
But he said nothing, and I dismounted.

'Where can I stable my horse?' I asked.

'I'll put it up,' he answered sullenly, stepping forward and taking the
reins in his hand.

'Very well,' I said. 'But I go with you. A merciful man is merciful to
his beast, and wherever I go I see my horse fed.'

'It will be fed,' he said shortly. And then he waited for me to go
into the house. 'The wife is in there,' he continued, looking at me
stubbornly.

'IMPRIMIS--if you understand Latin, my friend,' I answered, 'the h