THE BATTALION. 11
pudding, ham of mine own curing, hot rice cakes, and waffles
of three kinds.”
The traveler heard him out with some impatience, all the
while waving him away from his holsters and saddlebags,
which he persistently declined to give up. When the inn
keeper had once drawn breath, he broke in with: “Show
me first, good master Basmorne—that is your name, I be
lieve?—to a room where I may rid me of travel stains ere I
eat and drink. No, I need no one to carry my few traveling
comforts for me. Show me but a room.”
The innkeeper lit a tallow candle in a sconce and walked
before to show him the way. The stranger noted, as he
reached the top of the broad stairway and saw B asmorne stop
in front of a door, the key to which he drew from his pocket,
that the room assigned him was one of those immediately
over the huge kitchen below, into which he had had a peep,
as he came up, through the grated windows looking out on
the broad piazza.
The room into which B ismorne led him was fairly furnish
ed for the times. At a glance he saw that the bed, although
low, was large and richly curtained. There were one or two
easy chairs, a great chest of drawers,and a convenient lavabo.
Here the innkeeper stopped, turned up the basin, poured
water into it from a gilt pitcher that was set below it, and
with a bow left his guest to his ablutions.
But the stranger d.d not immediately proceed to make
himself ready for his supper. Tossing his holsters and sad
dlebags into one of the roomy chairs, he strode across the
room to take a view from the window looking into the yard
in rear of the inn. There was nothing very remarkable to be
seen there. A great number of those trees of dense foliage
called the.i i he Pride if India were near the back door of the
inn. A little farther off were leafy mulberries and great mas
ses of figtrees, and beyond them were the poultry yard, noisy
still with the quacks of ducks, though ihe fowls had long
gone to roost. There was a constant grunting of pigs in the
same quarter, which might account for the short colloquy