“Yes, sir; Mr. Bennerhalls, and Mr. Cramerhalls, and Mr. Joneshalls; I should think you might get one of them.”
I fancy the young lady must have seen a smile on my countenance just then. Bennerhalls, Cramerhalls, Joneshalls,—what outlandish cognomens were these? Did half the family names in Sharpsburg rejoice in the termination halls?
“I know Mr. Joneshalls,” said the young lady, as I stood solving the doubt, probably with an amused expression which she mistook for sarcastic incredulity.
“Joneshalls” I had never heard of. But I had heard of Jones. Thanks to that somewhat familiar name, I had found a clue to the mystery. “Jones hauls,” thought I, that is to say, Jones hauls people over the road in his wagon.
And the first-mentioned individual was not Bennerhalls at all, but one Benner who hauled.
I thanked the young lady for her courtesy,—and I am sure she must have thought me a very pleasant man,—and went to find Mr. Benner without the halls.
No difficulty this time. He was sitting on a doorstep, where he had perhaps heard me before inquiring up and down for Mr. Bennerhalls, and scratched his head over the odd patronymic.
“Yes, I have hosses, and I haul sometimes, but I can’t put one on ’em over that road to Harper’s Ferry, stranger, nohow!”
I got no more satisfaction out of Cramer, and still less out of Jones, who informed me that not only he would not go, but he didn’t believe there was a man in Sharpsburg that would.
I returned to the tavern, and appealed to the landlord, a pleasant and very obliging man, although not so well versed as some in the art of keeping a hotel. To my surprise, after what Jones had told me, he said, “if I could find no one else to haul me, he would.”