“Si, si, in the village.”
“Perhaps,” Hi said, “since you have all been kind and are here partly through me, you will all come with me to the inn for some refreshment?”
They all accepted this: they set out along a track of red earth which had recently been mud. The raised wooden ways on each side of the track had lately been washed out of position, so that they lay all poked up, like stretchers on a battlefield. The village seemed dead save for a yellow dog, who came out and howled at them.
“The people here get up very early,” the boatman explained, “so they have siesta early.”
In the inn, half a dozen men, including Giordano, were lying asleep on the benches or leaning over the table. The boat-master called out to the hostess that here was a gentleman who wished to hire a horse.
“Alas,” the hostess said, “the horses are all gone with the men to the fiesta. There will be no horses till to-morrow.”
“What then can the gentleman do?”
“Who knows?” she said.
One of the sleepers at the table roused.
“There are horses at the house at the cross roads,” he said. “If he will ask there, he might have a horse.”