of the lamps not
burning properly, and there being no water or towels in our rooms, was
due, he explained, to this disorganizing festival; as also the
circumstance of our doors having no knobs to them. "The young fellows at
the ball did carry on so," he said, chuckling with reminiscence of that
orgiastic occasion. The Sheldon Center gallants were evidently the very
devil; and those vanished door-knobs provoked pictures in our minds of
Lupercalian revels, which, alas! we had come too late to share.

We should have found anything good that our hostess cared to set before
us--so potent a charm is amiability--and I am sure no man need wish for a
better supper than the fried eggs and fried potatoes which copiously
awaited us down-stairs. As Colin washed his down with coffee, like a true
Franco-American, and I washed down mine with English breakfast tea, we
pulled out our pipes and smiled contentment at each other.

"Shall we have a chapter of the wisdom of Paragot before bed?" I said,
and, going to our small, carefully selected knapsack library, I found the
gay-hearted fantastical book we had promised to read together on our
wayfaring; and so the day drew to a good end.

Over the head of my bed hung a highly-coloured reproduction of Leonardo's
"Last Supper," and stuck in its frame was a leaf of blessed palm--by
which tokens I realized that my slumbers were to be under the wing of the
ancient Mother. As I closed my eyes, the musical chime of a great bell,
high up somewhere in the outer night, fell in benediction upon the
darkness. So I fell asleep in Europe, after all.

CHAPTER X

WHERE THEY SING FROM MORNING TILL NIGHT

I awoke to the same silvery salutation, and the sound of country boots
echoing across farm-yard cobble-stones. A lantern flashing in and out
among barns lit up my ceiling for a moment, a rough country voice hailed
another rough country voice somewhere outside, and the day slowly coughed
and sneezed itself awake in the six-o'clock grayness. I heard Colin
moving in the next room, and presently we were down-stairs, alertly
hungry. Our hostess, with morning smile, asked if we would mind waiting
breakfast for "the boarders." Meanwhile, we stepped out into the
unfolding day, and the village that had been a mystery to us in the
darkness was revealed; a handful of farmhouses on the brow of a
solitary-looking upland, and, looming over all, a great cathedral-like
church that seemed to have been transporte