tied up. They
ran in alongside this, drew their canoe clear up on to the float, turned
it over, and walked rapidly up toward the house from which the light
shone.

"We're in luck for once," said Harvey. "There's a sign over the door."

The sign, indeed, seemed to offer them some sort of welcome. It bore an
enormous hand pointing inward, and the inscription, "Half Way House."

"I wonder what it's half way between," said Henry Burns, as they paused
a moment on the threshold of the door. "Half way between the sky and
China, I guess. But I don't care, if the roof doesn't leak."

The picture, as they entered, was, in truth, one to cheer the most
wretched. Directly in front of them, in line with the door, a fire of
hickory logs roared in an old-fashioned brick fireplace, lighting up the
hotel office almost as much as did the two kerosene lamps, disposed at
either end. An old woman, dozing comfortably in a big rocking chair
before the blaze, jumped up at their appearance.

"Land sakes!" she ejaculated, querulously. "What a night to be comin' in
upon us! Dear! Dear! Want to stay over night, you say? Well, if that
ain't like boys--canooering, you call it, in this mess of a rain.
Gracious me, but you're wet to the skin, both er yer. Well, take them
wooden chairs, as won't be spoiled with water, and sit up by the fire
till I make a new pot of coffee and warm up a bit of stew and fry a bit
of bacon. Canooering in this weather! Well, that beats me."

"The proprietor, you say? Well, he's up the road, but he'll be in,
soon. You can pay me for the supper, and fix 'bout the stay in' over
night with him. I jes' tend to the cookin'. That's all I do."

She called them to supper in the course of a quarter of an hour, and had
clearly done her best for them. There was coffee, steaming hot, and
biscuit, warmed up to a crisp; bacon, freshly fried, with eggs; a dish
of home-made preserves, and a sheet of gingerbread.

"Eat all yer can hold," she chuckled, as they fell to, hungry as
panthers. "Canooering's good fer the appertite, ain't it? It's plain
vittles, but I reckon the cookin's good as the most of 'em, if I say it,
who shouldn't."

She rambled on, somewhat garrulously, as the boys ate. They did full
justice to the cooking, stuffed themselves till Henry Burns said he
could feel his skin stretch; paid the old woman her price for the
meal--"twenty-five cents apiece, an' it couldn't be done for less"--and
went and seated themselves