to support my rights I might not invoke
a law which had placed me under a ban, a law that would deal me out its
rigours did I reveal myself.

Then I had thoughts of seeking sanctuary in some monastery, of offering
myself as a lay-brother, to do menial work, and in this way perhaps I
might find peace, and, in a lesser degree than was originally intended,
the comforts of the religion to which I had been so grossly unfaithful.
The thought grew and developed into a resolve. It brought me some
comfort. It became a desire.

I pushed on, following the river along ground that grew swiftly steeper,
conscious that perforce my journey must end soon, for my mule was
showing signs of weariness.

Some three miles farther, having by then penetrated the green rampart
of the foothills, I came upon the little village of Pojetta. It is a
village composed of a single street throwing out as its branches a few
narrow alleys, possessing a dingy church and a dingier tavern; this last
had for only sign a bunch of withered rosemary that hung above its grimy
doors.

I drew rein there as utterly weary as my mule, hungry and thirsty
and weak. I got down and invited the suspicious scrutiny of the
lantern-jawed taverner, who, for all that my appearance was humble
enough in such garments as I wore, must have accounted me none the less
of too fine an air for such a house as his.

"Care for my beast," I bade him. "I shall stay here an hour or two."

He nodded surlily, and led the mule away, whilst I entered the tavern's
single room. Coming into it from the sunlight I could scarcely see
anything at first, so dark did the place seem. What light there was came
through the open door; for the chamber's single window had long since
been rendered opaque by a screen of accumulated dust and cobwebs. It
was a roomy place, low-ceilinged with blackened rafters running parallel
across its dirty yellow wash.

The floor was strewn with foul rushes that must have lain unchanged for
months, slippery with grease and littered with bones that had been flung
there by the polite guests the place was wont to entertain. And it stank
most vilely of rancid oil and burnt meats and other things indefinable
in all but their acrid, nauseating, unclean pungency.

A fire was burning low at the room's far end, and over this a girl
was stooping, tending something in a stew-pot. She looked round at my
advent, and revealed herself for a tall, black-haired, sloe-eyed wench,
comel