e forgotten. But
there was no gold-laced door-keeper at its humble door. A plain but
vigorous servant-girl answered our inquiries, then a man and woman who
owned the place appeared. It was clear that no travellers were expected,
or perhaps even desired, in this strange hostelry, which in its severe
style resembled the house which surmounts the unseaworthy-looking hulls
of the toy Noah's Arks, the universal possession of European childhood.
However, its roof was not hinged and it was not full to the brim of
slab-sided and painted animals of wood. Even the live tourist animal was
nowhere in evidence. We had something to eat in a long, narrow room at
one end of a long, narrow table, which, to my tired perception and to my
sleepy eyes, seemed as if it would tilt up like a see-saw plank, since
there was no one at the other end to balance it against our two dusty
and travel-stained figures. Then we hastened upstairs to bed in a room
smelling of pine planks, and I was fast asleep before my head touched
the pillow.

In the morning my tutor (he was a student of the Cracow University) woke
me up early, and as we were dressing remarked: "There seems to be a lot
of people staying in this hotel. I have heard a noise of talking up till
11 o'clock?" This statement surprised me; I had heard no noise whatever,
having slept like a top.

We went downstairs into the long and narrow dining-room with its long
and narrow table. There were two rows of plates on it. At one of the
many uncurtained windows stood a tall bony man with a bald head set off
by a bunch of black hair above each ear and with a long black beard. He
glanced up from the paper he was reading and seemed genuinely astonished
at our intrusion. By-and-by more men came in. Not one of them looked
like a tourist. Not a single woman appeared. These men seemed to
know each other with some intimacy, but I cannot say they were a very
talkative lot. The bald-headed man sat down gravely at the head of the
table. It all had the air of a family party. By-and-by, from one of the
vigorous servant-girls in national costume, we discovered that the place
was really a boarding-house for some English engineers engaged at the
works of the St. Gothard Tunnel; and I could listen my fill to
the sounds of the English language, as far as it is used at a
breakfast-table by men who do not believe in wasting many words on the
mere amenities of life.

This was my first contact with British mankind apart