Mr. Pepys felt frost-bitten. Here was a lady who meant what she said, and was not to be argued with. Mr. Pepys had studied the sex. “Barn” she had said, and “barn” it would be. The woman pulled open a door that sagged on its hinges and scraped the stones with its lower edge, and going in she hung the lantern to a nail in the wall. Mr. Pepys saw a litter of hay in one corner, a pile of broken bricks in another, and a few old garden tools and remnants of furniture in a third. He could not refrain from making a cynical grimace. “This is the dearest and the dirtiest lodging, ma’am, I ever paid for in advance.” “That’s as you please, sir; be grateful for what you can get.” She left them and crossed the yard, while John Gore fastened the two horses to a couple of iron brackets in the wall. Mr. Pepys took the lantern down and turned the hay over critically with his boot. Then he went and stood in the doorway, sniffing the night air hungrily, and attempting to decipher his surroundings in the dark. “I do not stomach this greatly, John. Where the deuce are we? That is what I should like to discover.” John Gore was unsaddling the horses. “As queer a place as ever I saw—and queer people in it, too. Listen here, John”—and he came in with an air of mystery—“those voices were never trained in Sussex.” “Oh!” “You hear such sweet strains in London City, John. What the deuce has brought such folk down here into Sussex?” John Gore laid one of the saddles on the ground. Mr. Pepys stooped over it and pulled a pistol from a holster. “Look to your powder-pans, John; my hair feels stiff under my wig. They would cut our throats for a shilling.” He smuggled the pistol suddenly under his coat as he heard footsteps crossing the court. The woman came in with a big jug, and bread and cold bacon upon a plate. Mr. Pepys made one more attempt to melt her churlishness. “Would you be so gracious as to tell us, ma’am, where we happen to be passing the night?” She kept her eyes to herself as she set the jug on an old stool. “In Sussex, sir.” Mr. Pepys shrugged his shoulders. “There is such a thing as a house, my dear madam.” “So I have heard, sir; but there is no house here.” “There is also a commandment, ma’am, that tells us not to prevaricate.” “So I have heard, sir. My man will call you in the morning.” She left them without another word, though John Gore called after her, bidding her to send her man with water for the horses. She came back herself anon, and left them a single bucketful, going out again as silently and sullenly as before. John Gore was holding the bucket under his horse’s nose when he heard the barn door grate over the stones, and close on them with a final heave from a heavy shoulder. Mr. Pepys’s face looked blankly scared. “Halloo, there, what are you shutting us in for?”