Weary horses nuzzled at
a watertrough, and serving-men in a dozen liveries made a bustle around the
stables, which formed two sides of the open quadrangle. At the foot of the
inn signpost beggars squatted--here a leper whining monotonously, there
lustier vagrants dicing for supper. At the main door a knot of young
squires stood talking in whispers--impatient, if one judged from the
restless clank of metal, but on duty, as appeared when a new-comer sought
entrance and was brusquely denied. For in an upper room there was business
of great folk, and the commonalty must keep its distance.
That upper room was long and low-ceiled, with a canopied bed in a corner
and an oaken table heaped with saddle-bags. A woman sat in a chair by the
empty hearth, very bright and clear in the glow of the big iron lantern
hung above the chimney. She was a tall girl, exquisitely dressed, from the
fine silk of her horned cap to the amethyst buckles on her Spanish shoes.
The saddle-bags showed that she was fresh from a journey, but her
tirewoman's hands must have been busy, for she bore no marks of the road.
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