But I was staringly wide awake. I heard the wind sweep down the mountain-side, and toss the branches of the melancholy pine, and then enter the house, and try all the doors along the passage. Sometimes strong currents of air blew my hair all over the pillow, as with strange whispering breaths. The green timber along the walls seemed to be sprouting, and sent a dampness even through the “b’arskin.” I felt like Robinson Crusoe in his tree, with the ladder pulled up,—or like the rocked baby of the nursery song. After lying awake half an hour, I regretted having stopped at Wingdam; at the end of the third quarter, I wished I had not gone to bed; and when a restless hour passed, I got up and dressed myself. There had been a fire down in the big room. Perhaps it was still burning. I opened the door and groped my way along the passage, vocal with the snores of the Alemanni and the whistling of the night wind; I partly fell downstairs, and at last entering the big room, saw the fire still burning. I drew a chair toward it, poked it with my foot, and was astonished to see, by the upspringing flash, that Parthenia was sitting there also, holding a faded-looking baby.
I asked her why she was sitting up.
“She did not go to bed on Wednesday night before the mail arrived, and then she awoke her husband, and there were passengers to ’tend to.”
“Did she not get tired sometimes?”
“A little, but Abner” (the barbarian’s Christian name) “had promised to get her more help next spring, if business was good.”
“How many boarders had she?”
“She believed about forty came to regular meals, and there was transient custom, which was as much as she and her husband could ’tend to. But he did a great deal of work.”
“What work?”
“Oh, bringing in the wood, and looking after the traders’ things.”
“How long had she been married?”