After a while he hallooed louder, and at last a little round window, or rather hole in the wall, opened, a man's head protruded cautiously, like a tortoise's from its shell, and eyed Gerard stolidly, but never uttered a syllable.
"Is this an inn ?" asked Gerard, with a covert sneer.
The head seemed to fall into a brown study; eventually it nodded, but lazily.
"Can I have entertainment here ?" Again the head pondered and ended by nodding, but sullenly, and seemed a skull overburdened with catch-penny interrogatories.
"How am I to get within, an't please you ?" At this the head popped in, as if the last question had shot it; and a hand popped out, pointed round the corner of the building, and slammed the window.
Gerard followed the indication, and after some research discovered that the fortification had one vulnerable part, a small low door on its flank.

As for the main entrance, that was used to keep out thieves and customers, except once or twice in a year, when they entered together, i.e., when some duke or count arrived in pomp with his train of gaudy ruffians.
Gerard, having penetrated the outer fort, soon found his way to the stove (as the public room was called from the principal article in it), and sat down near the oven, in which were only a few live embers that diffused a mild and grateful heat.
After waiting patiently a long time, he asked a grim old fellow with a long white beard, who stalked solemnly in, and turned the hour-glass, and then was stalking out, when supper would be.

The grisly Ganymede counted the guests on his fingers--"When I see thrice as many here as now." Gerard groaned.
The grisly tyrant resented the rebellious sound.

"Inns are not built for one," said he; "if you can't wait for the rest, look out for another lodging." Gerard sighed.
At this the greybeard frowned.
After a while company trickled steadily in, till full eighty persons of various conditions were congregated, and to our novice the place became a chamber of horrors; for here the mothers got together and compared ringworms, and the men scraped the mud off their shoes with their knives, and left it on the floor, and combed their long hair out, inmates included, and made their toilet, consisting generally of a dry rub.

Water, however, was brought in ewers.