“Where?” the stranger asked.
“Right yander—go through this gate,” tapping with his hand a piece of frame-work standing across the path.
The boys took the proffered pay, dropped it into their pockets, thrust their hands down to keep it from getting out, and plunged again into the depths of the weedy sea.
The traveler peered through the rain and fog into the yard, where the weeds had lost so much of their stature that he thought he must be nearing the shore. He picked up the gate leaning across the path, from panel to panel of the fence, and set it out of the way, remarking, “Everything about here is off its hinges—I’m nearly off myself.”
He approached the “hotel,” consisting mostly of “boxed” lean-to, and rested one foot upon the sill of the shed—by courtesy known as the “porch.” He paused; in the language of eastern railway danger signs, he thought he would “Stop, Look and Listen.” Silence and the clouds reigned. No sound but the patter of the drops on the roof. No light gleamed from the skimpy window, nor crept through the generous cracks in the wall.
He rapped at the door; no answer. He rapped again—louder; still no answer. There must be nobody at home in “the finest hotel.” So he hammered the rickety, raky, crazy shutter just because there wasn’t, till it shook, rattled and shivered, and the boards on the rear wall creaked and groaned in sympathy.
A cracked, rasping, whining voice from the inner depths called out, “Well!”
“Madam”—for that voice could belong to none but a crone—“I want to get to stay over night.”
“This is a purty time o’ night to be a-prowlin’ ’round, a-draggin’ uv honest, hard-workin’ folks out’n the bed ter wait on ye,” the landlady replied. The reprimand came mixed with the rattle of straw-ticks and the rustle of bedclothing.
“I am sorry,” the traveler answered, “but I came as early as I could. Really, I am neither the conductor, engineer, nor superintendent of that train. Don’t you keep hotel?”