half-past five o'clock Mr. Sieppe marshalled the party together. It
was time to return home.

The family insisted that Marcus and McTeague should take supper with
them at their home and should stay over night. Mrs. Sieppe argued they
could get no decent supper if they went back to the city at that hour;
that they could catch an early morning boat and reach their business in
good time. The two friends accepted.

The Sieppes lived in a little box of a house at the foot of B Street,
the first house to the right as one went up from the station. It was two
stories high, with a funny red mansard roof of oval slates. The interior
was cut up into innumerable tiny rooms, some of them so small as to be
hardly better than sleeping closets. In the back yard was a contrivance
for pumping water from the cistern that interested McTeague at once.
It was a dog-wheel, a huge revolving box in which the unhappy black
greyhound spent most of his waking hours. It was his kennel; he slept
in it. From time to time during the day Mrs. Sieppe appeared on the back
doorstep, crying shrilly, "Hoop, hoop!" She threw lumps of coal at him,
waking him to his work.

They were all very tired, and went to bed early. After great discussion
it was decided that Marcus would sleep upon the lounge in the front
parlor. Trina would sleep with August, giving up her room to McTeague.
Selina went to her home, a block or so above the Sieppes's. At nine
o'clock Mr. Sieppe showed McTeague to his room and left him to himself
with a newly lighted candle.

For a long time after Mr. Sieppe had gone McTeague stood motionless in
the middle of the room, his elbows pressed close to his sides, looking
obliquely from the corners of his eyes. He hardly dared to move. He was
in Trina's room.

It was an ordinary little room. A clean white matting was on the floor;
gray paper, spotted with pink and green flowers, covered the walls. In
one corner, under a white netting, was a little bed, the woodwork gayly
painted with knots of bright flowers. Near it, against the wall, was a
black walnut bureau. A work-table with spiral legs stood by the window,
which was hung with a green and gold window curtain. Opposite the window
the closet door stood ajar, while in the corner across from the bed was
a tiny washstand with two clean towels.

And that was all. But it was Trina's room. McTeague was in his lady's
bower; it seemed to him a little nest, intimate, discreet. He felt
hideously o