no notice, but watching everything as I
supped on the edge of my camp-bed. A
meditative pipe followed, and then I went
to bed in the open air under the shade of
a hospitable sycamore. There I lay looking
up at the sky. The mountains of the
Morea were to the right of me, "the sentinel
stars kept their watch in the sky," and
gentle influences came to me from heaven.
A cloud was my counterpane, clouds were
my bed-curtains, the roof of my bed-
chamber was star-spangled, the Pleiades
tucked me up. I consigned myself to the
protection of God and then fell asleep, with
a passing thought as to whether there were
any wolves still left in that part of Greece.
I never slept so soundly, or awoke so
refreshed. I was sorry the next night to
exchange that spacious and inexpensive
bed-chamber for a dirty room at feverish
Missolonghi.

One of the weirdest nights I ever spent
was in an old panelled oak bed, at a
village somewhere down in Leicestershire.
King Richard the Third, "the wicked
crook-back," was said to have slept in it
his last night, the night before Bosworth.
It was a stately, awful, ghostly kind of
bed, with faded vari-coloured feathers, like
undertakers' plumes, at the four corners.
The huge posts were carved, the legs
were carved, the roof (or whatever
upholsterers call it) was carved; the panels at
the back were adorned with rude scrambling
thick-set figures of Alexander and his men
slaying the miserable Persians, or it might
have been the Macabees defeating the
enemies of Israel. I did not like the look
of the thing at all. Farewell to sleep I
thought, directly the landlord threw open
the door, and with a certain state ushered
me into the room. There, then, had slept
the deformed tyrant; there, then, he had
divested himself of his ermined cloak,
buff boots, stage jewels, the sword that
had pierced good King Henry, and the
dagger that he used restlessly to pull in
and out of the sheath. Here, in uneasy
sleep, Richard, then, had seen his victims
return in ghastly procession. Henry the
Sixth "punched full of deadly holes,"
Clarence, Rivers, Grey, Vaughan, Hastings,
the two child princes "with bright hair
dabbled in blood," Queen Anne, Buckingham.
"Give me another horse, bind up my
wounds." I kept repeating it all down to

    Murder, stern murder, in the direst degree
    All several sins, all used in each degree,
    Throng to the bar, crying all, guilty! guilty!
    I shall despair. There is no creature loves me;
    And, if I die, no soul shall pity me.

I spent a miserable night, so full of fearful
dreams and ugly sights—that, as I am
a man, I would not spend another such a
night, though 'twere to buy a world of
happy days, so full of dismal horror was
the time, and so indeed I told the landlord
when I paid his bill in the morning,
and took the train for Leicester, flying from
the house as if it contained some one I had
murdered. The next day I stood on the
very field where Richard fell, and saw the
place where, desperately fighting, he was
at last struck down, and his crown beaten
off into a hawthorn bush; but I never
slept again in that haunted bed.

There is sometimes a curious feeling of
transformation when one awakes from sleep
in an unusual place. I remember once in
a knapsack walk through Switzerland, half
way up the Tête Noir, throwing myself on
my back close to some Alp roses. It was
a calm Sunday morning, and there was no
sound to break the sabbatical repose but
the sleepy hum of a bee on a gentian
flower a few feet from me. As I looked far
across at the great white peaks of the Alps,
I saw half way up a mountain a little spit
of snow suddenly loosen and fall in a tiny
cascade of white dust. That was a baby
avalanche, and the next moment I heard
the echoing thunder of its fall. From the
valley below, blue with the flax flowers,
arose the dreamy chime of bells. I stretched
my limbs in profound enjoyment of that
moment's halt on the march, and fell asleep.
When I awoke, I awoke with a shout of
surprise and a look of wonder at the fairy
country in which I found myself. Who
was I, and where was I?

I have felt the same feeling elsewhere.
Once, in Wales, I was trout-fishing in a
mountain stream in the very heart of Owen
Glendower's country; along that stream
his wild kerns and mailed bowmen had
often stolen in secret foray against the
English foemen; there, too, he and other
warriors had hidden from the English blood-
hounds when the knights of the English
frontier were upon his track. It was a
wild, impetuous little stream, capriciously
violent and impatient of restraint. Great
blocks of stone barred its way, and over
these it dashed foaming, only to loiter in
the deep still pools beyond. In the centre
of the stream rose a rock, from whence,
tradition said, an old Cromwellian trooper
used to preach to his persecuted Puritan
brethren, when the evil days came and
the Stuarts had their own again, and a
good deal of other people's besides. The