nd
stood waiting in the squalid common-room, my mind divided 'twixt
impatience to resume the road to Pesaro and fresh speculations upon the
means I was to adopt to enter it and yet save my neck--for this was now
become an obsessing problem.

As I stood waiting, there broke upon my ears the sound of an approaching
cavalcade: the noise of voices and the soft fall of hoofs upon the thick
snow carpet. The company halted at the door, and a loud, gruff voice was
raised to cry:

"Locandiere! Afoot, sluggard!"

I stepped to the door, with very natural curiosity, a company of four
mounted men escorting a mule-litter, the curtains of which were drawn so
that nothing might be seen of him or her that rode within. Grooms were
those four, as all the world might see at the first glance, and the
livery they wore was that of the noble House of Santafior--the holy
white flower of the quince being embroidered on the breast of their
gabardines.

They bore upon them such signs of hard and hasty travelling that it was
soon guessed they had spent the night in the saddle. Their horses were
in a foam of sweat; and the men themselves were splashed with mud from
foot to cap.

Even as I was going forward to regard them the taverner appeared,
leading my horse by the bridle. Now at an inn the traveller that arrives
is ever of more importance than he that departs. At sight of those
horsemen, the taverner forgot my impatience, for he paused to bow in
welcome to the one that seemed the leader.

"Most Magnificent," said he to that liveried hind, "command me."

"We need a guide," the fellow answered with an ill grace.

"A guide, Illustrious?" quoth the host. "A guide?"

"I said a guide, fool," answered him the groom. "Heard you never of such
animals? We need a man who knows the hills, to lead us by the shortest
road to Cagli."

The taverner shook his grey head stupidly. He bowed again until I
fancied I could hear the creak of his old joints.

"Here be no guides, Magnificent," he deplored. "Perhaps at Gualdo--"

"Animal," was the retort--for true courtesy commend me to a
lacquey!--"it is not our wish to pursue the road as far as Gualdo, else
had we not stopped at this kennel of yours."

I scarce know what it can have been that moved me to act as I then
did, for, in the truth, the manner of that rascal of a groom was little
prepossessing, and his master, I doubted, could be little better that he
left the fellow to hector it thus over that