When I reached the hotel, a man who said he was the proprietor came to my room. He was a sad man with tears in his voice.
"You're comin' to supper, ain't ye? It'll be the last time. It's a kind o' mournful occasion, but I like to have ye."
It was now my turn.
"No, I'm not coming to supper. You drove me out of here half starving into the street two hours ago. I couldn't get anything to eat at Nichols, and so I had to go down the hill to a place near the saw-mill, where I got the most infernal"——
He stopped me with a look of real anxiety.
"Not the five-meals-for-a-dollar place?"
"Yes."
"And you swallowed it?"
"Certainly—poached eggs, peaches, and a lot of things."
"No," he said reflectively, looking at me curiously. "You don't want no supper—prob'bility is you won't want no breakfast, either. You'd better eaten the saw-mill—it would 'er set lighter. If I'd known who you were I'd tried"——