Page:Tales of old Lusitania.djvu/154

138 sight of a house situated between two hills. It being now dark, she went up to the house, and finding the door open, she entered as far as the great hall, but seeing no one, she called out, "Will anyone here give a poor girl shelter for the night?" As no one answered her call, she walked in further, and roaming from chamber to chamber through dark passages, she found the place was deserted and empty of furniture, except here and there a broken chair, or a tumble-down table. She determined to take up her quarters there till the morning, and make herself as comfortable as the place admitted. Feeling hungry, she went down to the kitchen, and as she pried into every hole and corner in the store room in hopes of finding some food, she discovered among some rubbish and broken crockery, a brown earthen pot containing meal, and a cruse with rancid oil, which to her then was as good as the best and finest. She then went to the garden, and after gathering some sticks and lighting a fire, she made herself a hearth-cake with the meal and oil. But, just as she was laying out her frugal supper on the kitchen table, which, besides the cake, consisted of a few small radishes she had dug up in the garden, and a cupful of water from the well, she heard a noise which so frightened her that she hid herself and listened. She soon found that the noise was made by a band of robbers who were bringing in their booty to hide it in the house.