o
know who he was, or he wouldn't have written a book about it, and come
to so lame and impotent a conclusion. It certainly puzzled me at that
instant to define my identity. "Thirty years ago," I reflected, "I was
nothing; fifty years hence I shall be nothing again, humanly speaking.
In the mean time, who am I, sure enough?" It had never before occurred
to me what an indefinite article I was. I wish it had not occurred to me
then. Standing there in the rain and darkness, I wrestled vainly with
the problem, and was constrained to fall back upon a Yankee expedient.

"Isn't this a hotel?" I asked finally.

"Well, it is a sort of hotel," said the voice, doubtfully. My hesitation
and prevarication had apparently not inspired my interlocutor with
confidence in me.

"Then let me in. I have just driven over from K---- in this infernal
rain. I am wet through and through."

"But what do you want here, at the Corners? What's your business? People
don't come here, leastways in the middle of the night."

"It isn't in the middle of the night," I returned, incensed. "I come on
business connected with the new road. I'm the superintendent of
the works."

"Oh!"

"And if you don't open the door at once, I'll raise the whole
neighborhood--and then go to the other hotel."

When I said that, I supposed Greenton was a village with a population of
at least three or four thousand, and was wondering vaguely at the
absence of lights and other signs of human habitation. Surely, I
thought, all the people cannot be abed and asleep at half past ten
o'clock: perhaps I am in the business section of the town, among
the shops.

"You jest wait," said the voice above.

This request was not devoid of a certain accent of menace, and I braced
myself for a sortie on the part of the besieged, if he had any such
hostile intent. Presently a door opened at the very place where I least
expected a door, at the farther end of the building, in fact, and a man
in his shirt-sleeves, shielding a candle with his left hand, appeared on
the threshold. I passed quickly into the house, with Mr. Tobias Sewell
(for this was Mr. Sewell) at my heels, and found myself in a long,
low-studded bar-room.

There were two chairs drawn up before the hearth, on which a huge
hemlock back-log was still smoldering, and on the unpainted deal counter
contiguous stood two cloudy glasses with bits of lemon-peel in the
bottom, hinting at recent libations. Against the discolored wal