from the haunts of the rats, an inseparable heirloom for all who
disturbed those corridors.

And so they came to the chamber.

Mine host entered, bowed without grace in the doorway, and extended his
left hand, pointing into the room. The draughts that blew from the
rat-holes in the wainscot, or the mere action of entering, beat down
the flame of the squat, guttering candle so that the chamber remained
dim for a moment, in spite of the candle, as would naturally be the
case. Yet the impression made upon Rodriguez was as of some old
darkness that had been long undisturbed and that yielded reluctantly to
that candle's intrusion, a darkness that properly became the place and
was a part of it and had long been so, in the face of which the candle
appeared an ephemeral thing devoid of grace or dignity or tradition.
And indeed there was room for darkness in that chamber, for the walls
went up and up into such an altitude that you could scarcely see the
ceiling, at which mine host's eyes glanced, and Rodriguez followed his
look.

He accepted his accommodation with a nod; as indeed he would have
accepted any room in that inn, for the young are swift judges of
character, and one who had accepted such a host was unlikely to find
fault with rats or the profusion of giant cobwebs, dark with the dust
of years, that added so much to the dimness of that sinister inn. They
turned now and went back, in the wake of that guttering candle, till
they came again to the humbler part of the building. Here mine host,
pushing open a door of blackened oak, indicated his dining-chamber.
There a long table stood, and on it parts of the head and hams of a
boar; and at the far end of the table a plump and sturdy man was seated
in shirt-sleeves feasting himself on the boar's meat. He leaped up at
once from his chair as soon as his master entered, for he was the
servant at the Dragon and Knight; mine host may have said much to him
with a flash of his eyes, but he said no more with his tongue than the
one word, "Dog": he then bowed himself out, leaving Rodriguez to take
the only chair and to be waited upon by its recent possessor. The
boar's meat was cold and gnarled, another piece of meat stood on a
plate on a shelf and a loaf of bread near by, but the rats had had most
of the bread: Rodriguez demanded what the meat was. "Unicorn's tongue,"
said the servant, and Rodriguez bade him set the dish before him, and
he set to well content, though I fear the