Upon that both of us came to one mind. We could go no farther. I was seeking for a tree whose branches might afford some protection from the shrewd airs of the night, and in such a desert a tree was hard to find, when I thought I discerned a light a great way off. I cannot tell you, reader, in what a tumult of hope I made towards this beacon. It showed across the waste so faintly that at first it looked no more than the ignis fatuus. Yet we had no other hope than this. Cheerful words to the hapless Babieca and shaking of the reins persuaded the good beast still to do his best. And presently these doubts were settled, for as we pressed on towards our talisman we found it to proceed from a sort of house. Thereupon I could have cried aloud for joy, in such a manner had hunger, weariness, and solitude wrought upon the hardihood of my resolves.
It was no easy task to find the place whence this light proceeded. And when at last I was able to learn I uttered a cry of delight. For it was an inn; a little inn and paltry, and yet the sweetest inn, I think, to which a traveller ever brought his weariness.
CHAPTER II
OF AN INN. OF A MAN FROM FOREIGN PARTS
On coming at last to the door I found this wayside inn to be of a mean condition, but at least it had four walls to it, and therefore might be called an inn. Such as it was it promised food and rest and the society of man. Observing a stable to be near at hand I led Babieca to it. A wretched hovel it was, yet it also had four walls of a sort and therefore might be called a stable.
Although no one came out of the inn to receive me and a great air of desolation was upon everything, I led Babieca within the hovel and contrived to find him a place in which he might repose. After much groping in the starlight—other light there was none—which came through the holes in the mud walls I was able to scrape enough straw together to form his bed. Also I was able to find him a supper of rough fare. And in so doing I observed that this poor place was in the occupation of a horse of a singular appearance. As well as I could learn in the darkness this was a very tall, large-boned, and handsome beast, sleek and highly fed. Near to it, hanging upon a nail in the wall, was a saddle so massive of artifice and so rarely bedizened as to indicate that both this piece of furniture and the beast that bore it were in such a degree above the common sort as doubtless to be the property of a lord. And this conclusion pleased me very well; for I was glad to believe that one of his condition had lent his presence to this mean place, because there is no need to tell you, gentle reader, a man of birth needs one of a similar quality with whom to beguile his leisure.
As I issued, however, from the stable and made to enter the inn I was stayed at the door by a dismal rustic who proved to be the landlord. His bearing was of such singular dejection and in his countenance was such sore embarrassment as to make it clear that either a grievous calamity had lately befallen him or that one was about to do so.
“I give you good evening, honest fellow. Have you seen a ghost?”
The dismal wight placed a finger to his lip.
“Hush, sir! hush, I pray you!” he whispered hoarsely.
“Nay, my good fellow, I hush for no man—that is, unless you have a corpse in the house.”