Sentence:  One morning I had been driven to the precarious refuge afforded by the <WSD>steps</WSD> of the inn, after rejecting offers from the Celebrity to join him in a variety of amusements. But even here I was not free from interruption, for he was seated on a horse-block below me, playing with a fox terrier. 
Meaning of the word marked with <WSD> tags:  A rest, or one of a set of rests, for the foot in ascending or descending, as a stair, or a rung of a ladder.