“You are very welcome, Mr. Vane!” she said, calling me by the name I had forgotten. “Your entertainment will be scanty, but, as the night is not far spent, and the day not at hand, it is better you should be indoors. Here you will be safe, and a little lack is not a great misery.” “I thank you heartily, madam,” I replied. “But, seeing you know the name I could not tell you, may I not now know yours?” “My name is Mara,” she answered. Then I remembered the sexton and the little black cat. “Some people,” she went on, “take me for Lot’s wife, lamenting over Sodom; and some think I am Rachel, weeping for her children; but I am neither of those.” “I thank you again, Mara,” I said. “--May I lie here on your floor till the morning?” “At the top of that stair,” she answered, “you will find a bed--on which some have slept better than they expected, and some have waked all the night and slept all the next day. It is not a very soft one, but it is better than the sand--and there are no hyenas sniffing about it!” The stair, narrow and steep, led straight up from the room to an unceiled and unpartitioned garret, with one wide, low dormer window. Close under the sloping roof stood a narrow bed, the sight of which with its white coverlet made me shiver, so vividly it recalled the couches in the chamber of death. On the table was a dry loaf, and beside it a cup of cold water. To me, who had tasted nothing but fruit for months, they were a feast. “I must leave you in the dark,” my hostess called from the bottom of the stair. “This lantern is all the light I have, and there are things to do to-night.” “It is of no consequence, thank you, madam,” I returned. “To eat and drink, to lie down and sleep, are things that can be done in the dark.” “Rest in peace,” she said. I ate up the loaf, drank the water every drop, and laid myself down. The bed was hard, the covering thin and scanty, and the night cold: I dreamed that I lay in the chamber of death, between the warrior and the lady with the healing wound. I woke in the middle of the night, thinking I heard low noises of wild animals. “Creatures of the desert scenting after me, I suppose!” I said to myself, and, knowing I was safe, would have gone to sleep again. But that instant a rough purring rose to a howl under my window, and I sprang from my bed to see what sort of beast uttered it.