imb up de ladder, 'ca'se de sta'rsteps is broke down, en you'll find
me. I's a-roostin' in de ha'nted house 'ca'se I can't 'ford to roos'
nowher's else." She started toward the door, but stopped and said,
"Gimme de dollah bill!" He gave it to her. She examined it and said,
"H'm--like enough de bank's bu'sted." She started again, but halted
again. "Has you got any whisky?"

"Yes, a little."

"Fetch it!"

He ran to his room overhead and brought down a bottle which was
two-thirds full. She tilted it up and took a drink. Her eyes sparkled
with satisfaction, and she tucked the bottle under her shawl, saying,
"It's prime. I'll take it along."

Tom humbly held the door for her, and she marched out as grim and erect
as a grenadier.

CHAPTER 9

Tom Practices Sycophancy

Why is it that we rejoice at a birth and grieve at a funeral? It is
because we are not the person involved.

--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar

It is easy to find fault, if one has that disposition. There was once a
man who, not being able to find any other fault with his coal, complained
that there were too many prehistoric toads in it.

--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar

Tom flung himself on the sofa, and put his throbbing head in his hands,
and rested his elbows on his knees. He rocked himself back and forth and
moaned.

"I've knelt to a nigger wench!" he muttered. "I thought I had struck the
deepest depths of degradation before, but oh, dear, it was nothing to
this. . . . Well, there is one consolation, such as it is--I've struck
bottom this time; there's nothing lower."

But that was a hasty conclusion.

At ten that night he climbed the ladder in the haunted house, pale, weak,
and wretched. Roxy was standing in the door of one of the rooms,
waiting, for she had heard him.

This was a two-story log house which had acquired the reputation a few
years ago of being haunted, and that was the end of its usefulness.
Nobody would live in it afterward, or go near it by night, and most
people even gave it a wide berth in the daytime. As it had no
competition, it was called _the_ haunted house. It was getting crazy and
ruinous now, from long neglect. It stood three hundred yards beyond
Pudd'nhead Wilson's house, with nothing between but vacancy. It was the
last house in the town at that end.

Tom followed Roxy into the room. She had a pile of clean straw in the
corner for a bed, some cheap but well-kept clothing was hanging on the
w