The hovel was a squalid, beggary thing that might have been built over night somewhere back in the dark ages.

Its single door was so low that one was obliged to stoop to enter the little room where the dame had been holding forth for three-score years, 'twas said.

This was her throne-room, her dining-room, her bed-chamber, her all, it would seem, unless one had been there before and knew that her kitchen was beyond, in the side of the hill.

The one window, sans glass, looked narrowly out upon an odd opening in the foliage below, giving the occupant of the hut an unobstructed view of the winding road that led up from Edelweiss.

The door faced the Monastery road down which the two men had just ridden.