"Well," snapped that amiable beast, "what are you waitin' for?"
"You couldn't give me a bed for the night?"
"Course I could, for a shillin'."
"I haven't a shilling, I regret to say."
"Then you'd best get one, or go without your bed," replied the lady, and banged the door in his face.
Under this last indignity even Cicero's philosophy gave way, and he launched an ecclesiastic curse at the inhospitable inn.
Fortunately the weather was warm and tranquil. Not a breath of wind stirred the trees. The darkling earth was silent--silent as the watching stars. Even the sordid soul of the vagabond was stirred by the solemn majesty of the sky. He removed his battered hat and looked up.
"The heavens are telling the glory of God," he said; but, not recollecting the rest of the text, he resumed his search for a resting-place.
It was now only between nine and ten o'clock, yet, as he wandered down the silent street, he could see no glimmer of a light in any window. His feet took him, half unconsciously as it were, by the path leading towards the tapering spire. He went on through a belt of pines which surrounded the church, and came suddenly upon the graveyard, populous with the forgotten dead--at least, he judged they were forgotten by the state of the tombstones.
On the hither side he came upon a circular chapel, with lance-shaped windows and marvelous decoration wrought in gray-stone on the outer walls. Some distance off rose a low wall, encircling the graveyard, and beyond the belt of pines through which he had just passed stretched the league-long herbage of the moor. He guessed this must be the Lady Chapel.