looking into a largish room, roofed with rough rafters from which hung
what might have been hams, flitches and cheeses. It was mud-walled and had
a floor of beaten earth, in which was a sand-pit, nearly full of ashes and
with a small fire smouldering in the middle of it. Opposite me was a rough
plank partition with two doors in it, both open. Against the partition,
between the doors, hung bronze lamps, iron pots and pottery jars. The room
was dim, lighted only from the door, in which I stood, and from the narrow
smoke-vent overhead.

By the fire, on their hands and knees, and apparently poking at it, each
with a bit of wood, or about to lay the bits of wood on it, were two
little girls, shock-headed, barefoot and bare-legged, clad only in coarse
tunics of rusty dark wool. I am not accurate as to children's ages: I took
these girls for seven and five; but they may have been six and four or
eight and six. At sight of us they scrambled to their feet and fled
through one of the doors, one shrieking, the other screaming:

"Mamma! Mamma! Strange men! Strange men!"

In her panic she did not attempt to shut the door behind her and bolt it,
both of which, as I afterwards discovered, she might have done.

No other voices came to our ears and I followed the children into the rear
room in which they had taken refuge. It was totally dark, except for what
light found its way through its door, and was cramped and small and half
filled by a Gallic bed. I had never seen a Gallic bed before. Such a bed
is made like the body of a travelling-carriage or travelling litter,
entirely encased in panelling, topped off with a sort of flat roof of
panelling, and with sliding panels above the level of the cording, so that
the occupants can shut themselves in completely; a structure which looks
to a novice like a device for smothering its occupants, but which is a
welcome retreat and shelter on cold, windy, winter nights, as I have
learned by later experience. As this was my first sight of one I was
amazed at it.

Usually, as I learned later, such a bedstead is piled up with feather-
beds, so that the occupant is much above the level of the top edge of the
lower front on which the panels slide. But this bed was poorly provided
with mattresses and I had to stare down into it to descry the children's
mother, who lay like a corpse in a coffin, but half buried in bedding and
quilts, only her face visible. She was certainly alive, for her breathing