Everybody bent over it.
"I have never seen it before," said Langler.
"No, it is certainly a stranger," said Miss Emily, "and what can that be round its leg?"
She was rather palish.
The thing round the leg was a piece of paper, wound with worsted.
And Langler, peering at it, said: "stay, I will undertake the cure of this wanderer."
CHAPTER III
THE STYRIAN
Swandale cottage is very large, covering more than half of the island, but mostly one-storeyed, the roofs being of thatch made heavy with rocks, and the walls of marble kept snow-white by means of snakestone; but not much of the walls is visible, for the eaves of the roof droop so low that parts of them have had to be removed over the doors; and as most of the timber about the cottage is huge, the twilight within broods at noon. At the time of which I write candles burned in most of the rooms throughout the day in an atmosphere smoky with incense; for all within was a feeling of the ecclesiastical, everywhere the Church, monasticism, the vestment, the ritual, the Middle Ages, the mood of the altar.