Canterbury itself was, of course, once full of such travellers’ rests. Chief among these was the inn called “The Chequers of the Hope,” at the corner of Mercery Lane, leading to the Cathedral; but, although the lower part of the walls and the mediæval crypt remain, the present aspect of the building is modern and commonplace. It is, in point of fact, a “Ladies’ Outfitting” shop. Travellers in those centuries seem to have been in many ways well cared for. The hospitality of the “houses of God” and pilgrims’ halts, however, does but show the bright side of the medal, and implies a very dark reverse. Good, charitable folks, as we have seen, were rightly sorry for wayfarers, and gave or bequeathed money for lightening the trials and tribulations of their lot. The Church itself regarded the succouring of all such as one of its first duties, and so granted all manner of ghostly privileges to such persons as would build causeways, improve roads, or establish hostels. The bargain seemed in those times a fair one, and induced many to give who would not otherwise have given. To buy absolution for gold, or a few days less purgatory by charitable bequest was good business; but we may wonder if those who thus purchased remission of sins or an “early door” into Paradise sometimes spared a pitying thought for those poor devils who had not the needful for such indulgences. [Illustration: WESTGATE, CANTERBURY, AND THE “FALSTAFF” INN.] Day after day travellers--whose very name comes from “travail” = toil or trouble--journeyed amid dangers, and, when by mischance they were benighted, suffered agonies of apprehension. They intended only to “journey”--to travel by day, as the original sense of that word indicated--and were afflicted with the liveliest apprehensions when night came and found them still on the road. Toiling in the hollow roads, deep in ruts and mud, with terror they saw the sun go down while yet the friendly town was far away, and came at last, in fear and darkness, to the walled city, only to find its gates closed for the night. Every fortified town closed its gates at sunset; else, in those dangerous times, what use your gates and walls? As reasonably might the modern citizen leave his street door wide open all night, as the mediæval town not close its gates when the hours of darkness were come; and so those travellers and pilgrims who, from much story-telling, praying, or feasting along the road, arrived late at Canterbury, found the portals of Westgate sternly closed against them. Originally they were obliged to lie outside, under the walls or in the fields, instead of being made welcome at the comfortable hostels within, where a man might find jolly company in the rush-strewn hall, and for food and drink be free of the best; but, for the accommodation of such laggards, the suburb of St. Dunstan, without the walls of Canterbury, sprang up at a very early date, and to the custom