it apparently failed,
if eleven cellars choked up with _debris_ and overgrown with burdocks
are any indication of failure. The farm, however, was a good farm, as
things go in New Hampshire, and Tobias Sewell, the son-in-law, could
afford to snap his fingers at the travelling public if they came near
enough--which they never did.

The hotel remains to-day pretty much the same as when Jonathan Bayley
handed in his accounts in 1840, except that Sewell hasfrom time to time
sold the furniture of some of the upper chambers to bridal couples
in the neighborhood. The bar is still open, and the parlor door says
Parlour in tall black letters. Now and then a passing drover looks in at
that lonely bar-room, where a high-shouldered bottle of Santa Cruz rum
ogles with a peculiarly knowing air a shrivelled lemon on a shelf; now
and then a farmer rides across country to talk crops and stock and take
a friendly glass with Tobias; and now and then a circus caravan with
speckled ponies, or a menagerie with a soggy elephant, halts under the
swinging sign, on which there is a dim mail-coach with four phantomish
horses driven by a portly gentleman whose head has been washed off
by the rain. Other customers there are none, except that one regular
boarder whom have mentioned.

If misery makes a man acquainted with strange bed-fellows, it is equally
certain that the profession of surveyor and civil engineer often takes
one into undreamed-of localities. I had never heard of Greenton until
my duties sent me there, and kept me there two weeks in the dreariest
season of the year. I do not think I would, of my own volition, have
selected Greenton for a fortnight's sojourn at any time; but now the
business is over, I shall never regret the circumstances that made me
the guest of Tobias Sewell, and brought me into intimate relations with
Miss Mehetabel's Son.

It was a black October night in the year of grace 1872, that discovered
me standing in front of the old tavern at the Corners.

Though the ten miles' ride from K------ had been depressing, especially
the last five miles, on account of the cold autumnal rain that had set
in, I felt a pang of regret on hearing the rickety open wagon turn round
in the road and roll off in the darkness. There were no lights visible
anywhere, and only for the big, shapeless mass of something in front of
me, which the driver had said was the hotel, I should have fancied that
I had been set down by the roadside. I