'At your service,' he said politely. 'I am the landlord, Sir, and I
hope you will stay the night, for to tell you the truth I have had no
company for a week.'

I pulled myself up on the parapet of the bridge and filled my
pipe. I began to detect an ally.

'You're young to be an innkeeper,' I said.

'My father died a year ago and left me the business. I live there
with my grandmother. It's a slow job for a young man, and it
wasn't my choice of profession.'

'Which was?'

He actually blushed. 'I want to write books,' he said.

'And what better chance could you ask?' I cried. 'Man, I've often
thought that an innkeeper would make the best story-teller in the world.'

'Not now,' he said eagerly. 'Maybe in the old days when you had
pilgrims and ballad-makers and highwaymen and mail-coaches on
the road. But not now. Nothing comes here but motor-cars full of
fat women, who stop for lunch, and a fisherman or two in the
spring, and the shooting tenants in August. There is not much
material to be got out of that. I want to see life, to travel the world,
and write things like Kipling and Conrad. But the most I've done
yet is to get some verses printed in CHAMBERS'S JOURNAL.'
I looked at the inn standing golden in the sunset against the
brown hills.