“Not to-day.”
“Where does this go, and when?”
“St. Peter's. Starts in fifteen minutes.”
This seems like “business,” and we are inclined to try it, especially as we have no notion where St. Peter's is.
“Does any other stage go from here to-day anywhere else?”
“Yes. Port Hood. Quarter of an hour.”
Everything was about to happen in fifteen minutes. We inquire further. St. Peter's is on the east coast, on the road to Sydney. Port Hood is on the west coast. There is a stage from Port Hood to Baddeck. It would land us there some time Sunday morning; distance, eighty miles.
Heavens! what a pleasure-trip. To ride eighty miles more without sleep! We should simply be delivered dead on the Bras d'Or; that is all. Tell us, gentle driver, is there no other way?
“Well, there's Jim Hughes, come over at midnight with a passenger from Baddeck; he's in the hotel now; perhaps he'll take you.”
Our hope hung on Jim Hughes. The frowzy servant piloted us up to his sleeping-room. “Go right in,” said she; and we went in, according to the simple custom of the country, though it was a bedroom that one would not enter except on business. Mr. Hughes did not like to be disturbed, but he proved himself to be a man who could wake up suddenly, shake his head, and transact business,—a sort of Napoleon, in fact. Mr. Hughes stared at the intruders for a moment, as if he meditated an assault.