Page:Diary of a Pilgrimage (1891).pdf/117

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DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE.
115

Under ordinary circumstances I should have been afraid that such a supper would cause me to be more eager for change and movement during the ensuing six hours than for sleep; but I felt that to-night it would take a dozen half-baked firebricks to keep me awake five seconds after I had got my head on the pillow—or what they call a pillow in Germany; and so, without hesitation, I made a very satisfactory meal.

After supper our host escorted us to our bedroom, an airy apartment adorned with various highly-coloured wood-carvings of a pious but somewhat ghastly character, calculated, I should say, to exercise a disturbing influence upon the night's rest of a nervous or sensitive person.

"Mind that we are called at proper time in the morning," said B. to the man. "We don't want to wake up at four o'clock in the afternoon and find that we have missed the play, after coming all this way to see it."

"Oh! that will be all right," answered the old fellow. "You won't get much chance of oversleeping yourself. We shall all be up and about, and the whole village stirring, before five; and besides, the band will be playing at six just beneath the window here, and the cannon on the Kofel goes off at———"

"Look here," I interrupted, "that won't do for me, you know. Don't you think that I am going to be woke up by mere