From Glen Innis to Newcastle there is a regular English narrow-gauge railroad. The carriages were, so far as my unprofessional eye could tell, a senseless copy of what there is in the old country. In winter they were bearable, but in summer the carriage I was in must be stifling. It had neither curtains nor sunshades. The Brisbane line was American, narrow gauge and with long carriages on bogie trucks. At one place we passed over a height of 4,500 feet. This was on the side of a mountain called Ben Lomond. All the way down to Newcastle through New England there was much cultivated country, and many prettily situated towns. The journey took fourteen and a half hours.
At Newcastle I took quarters in an hotel, which was not the best one in the place. A fellow-traveller on the train recommended it to me as the best house in Newcastle. You entered at a bar where there was a stream of visitors passing in to drink, and then passing out rubbing their mouths with their coat-sleeves.
A NEWCASTLE LEGEND; OR, THE STORY OF THE DARK ROOM.
My bedroom was like a cellar taken upstairs. But for a glimmer that came in over a door leading into a drawing-room, I was in utter darkness. It was even necessary to light a candle to dress by. When next morning I interviewed the landlord I inquired as to the nature of his contract with the neighbouring barber, for no one could possibly see to shave in his establishment.
“What, were you in number sixteen?” asked the landlord. “I gave strict orders that no guests were to be put in that room. The trouble that I experienced about that room nearly killed me once. If you want me to pay your barber’s account I’ll do it with pleasure, but anyhow you might take a drink before you leave just to show that you don’t owe me any ill feeling on account of having slept in number sixteen.” All the while the landlord looked so anxiously at me, that I began to think that he was astonished at seeing me alive. “Can’t visitors sleep in number sixteen?” I asked. “Sleep indeed,” was the reply, “the difficulty is to stop them sleeping. I had one man sleep in the room for nearly a week without ever coming out of it.” “Well, what’s the matter?” I inquired; “has there been a murder committed in number sixteen, is it haunted or what?”
“It happened in this way,” said the landlord. “Just about this time last year, we had a lot of visitors from up country making their way southwards towards Melbourne, anxious, I suppose, to be in time to see the Melbourne Cup. One cold drizzly afternoon an elderly man arrived carrying in his hand a small yellow portmanteau tied up with a rope. He said he had been sitting in the coach for the last three or four days, and was very tired. From his dirty clothes and a curious limp that he had got, we could quite believe that he had been knocking about for some time.
“I asked my wife what we should do with the stranger, as all the rooms were full. ‘Oh, put him in number sixteen, Joe,’ said my wife. ‘It’s dark now, and maybe he’ll get up pretty early and never know that there’s no window.’ At that time I may tell you that the door into the drawing-room had not been made, so there was no window. The quantity of steak and bread that the old man put away while having his supper was something terrible. Matilda, who had been sitting in the back parlour listening to the order which he gave, said ‘she thought he was provisioning a fortress.’ At last he went to bed. On his way upstairs he hoped that number sixteen was a quiet room, and that no one would disturb him in the morning. He wanted to make up for the sleep he had lost sitting in the coach. As I was going downstairs I heard him lock and double-bolt his door, and then commence to hum a tune. This was at 9 p.m. on June 30th. I don’t know whether you can believe me, but that door was not opened until 12 o’clock on the 5th of July. Of course we didn’t take much notice of him next morning. He wanted to sleep he said, and perhaps might not turn out until 12 o’clock. When dinner time came I had forgotten all about him. You know it is difficult for us to keep the run of all our guests, and, besides, he might have been outside attending to business in the town.
“That night, however, Susan, the chambermaid, told my wife that she could not open number sixteen; whenever she knocked at the door there was no answer. We thought it a bit odd, but as he said he was tired and wanted to sleep we did not disturb him.
“Next morning, as he did not turn up to breakfast, my wife was a bit anxious, and said to me, ‘You’d better go upstairs, Joe, and see if number sixteen is going to get up.’ Well, after knocking at the door two or three times, somebody inside said, ‘Hillo! what’s the matter?’ ‘Ain’t you going to get up?’ says I. ‘All right,—presently,’ was the answer, and I went downstairs and told my wife.
“Dinner time came and then tea time, but still number sixteen hadn’t come down. ‘Better go and rap again, Joe,’ said my wife. Up I went, and after thumping on the door till I heard somebody inside grumbling about a noisy house and people not being allowed to sleep. ‘Are you never going to get up?’ I said through the keyhole. ‘Will get up when it’s daylight,’ was the answer. ‘He’ll get up when it’s daylight,’ said I to myself. ‘Why, it’s nearly forty-eight hours since he went to bed, and he talks of sleeping twelve hours more.’ When I told my wife what number sixteen had said, she looked at me a moment, and then said, ‘Joe, this comes of putting a man into a dark room. It never will be daylight in there.’ ‘Matilda, you’ve struck it, exactly,’ I said; ‘the old fool thinks it is in the middle of the night.’ Then we discussed what we should do. ‘Better let him alone to-night,’ was Maria’s suggestion; ‘he has got to sleep somewhere you know. We can tell him that it’s daylight to-morrow morning.’