time, and as for the church, it was fortified with narrow windows made
for arrows.

Not only did the Moors call an inn a Fundouk, but also they lived (and
live) not on the ground floor, but on the first floor of their houses:
so after them the Spaniards. We came in from the street through those
great oaken doors, not into a room, but into a sort of barn, with a
floor of beaten earth; from this a stair (every banister of which was
separately carved in a dark-wood) led up to the storey upon which the
inn was held. There was no hour for the meal. Some were beginning to
eat, some had ended. When we asked for food it was prepared, but an hour
was taken to prepare it, and it was very vile; the wine also was a wine
that tasted as much of leather as of grapes, and reminded a man more of
an old saddle than of vineyards.

The people who put this before us had in their faces courage, complete
innocence, carelessness, and sleep. They spoke to us in their language
(I understood it very ill) of far countries, which they did not clearly
know--they hardly knew the French beyond the hills. As no road led into
their ageless village, so did no road lead out of it. To reach the great
cities in the plain, and the railway eighty miles away, why, there was
the telephone. They slept at such late hours as they chose; by midnight
many were still clattering through the lane below. No order and no law
compelled them in anything.

The Two Men were asleep after this first astonishing glimpse of
forgotten men and of a strange country. In the stifling air outside
there was a clattering of the hoofs of mules and an argument of drivers.
A long way off a man was playing a little stringed instrument, and there
was also in the air a noise of insects buzzing in the night heat; when