This resolution formed, he plucked up a little heart; and being faint with hunger, asked one of the men of garlic whether this was not an inn after all?
"Whence come you, who know not 'The Star of the Forest' ?" was the reply.
"I am a stranger; and in my country inns have aye a sign." "Droll country yours! What need of a sign to a public-house--a place that every soul knows ?" Gerard was too tired and faint for the labour of argument, so he turned the conversation, and asked where he could find the landlord?
At this fresh display of ignorance, the native's contempt rose too high for words.

He pointed to a middle-aged woman seated on the other side of the oven; and turning to his mates, let them know what an outlandish animal was in the room.

Thereat the loud voices stopped, one by one, as the information penetrated the mass; and each eye turned, as on a pivot, following Gerard, and his every movement, silently and zoologically.
The landlady sat on a chair an inch or two higher than the rest, between two bundles.

From the first, a huge heap of feathers and wings, she was taking the downy plumes, and pulling the others from the quills, and so filling bundle two littering the floor ankle-deep, and contributing to the general stock a stuffy little malaria, which might have played a distinguished part in a sweet room, but went for nothing here.

Gerard asked her if he could have something to eat.
She opened her eyes with astonishment.