ght not be so easy for us to have our story
believed."

For a minute all stood aghast, then Jake quietly remarked: "It is now
one by the clock. If you can find me some of that old blue paper I once
chucked under the eaves in the front attic, I will engage to have it on
those four walls before daylight. Bring the raggedest rolls you can
find. If it shouldn't be dry to the touch when they come to see it
to-morrow, it must look so stained and old that no one will think of
laying hand on it. I'll go make the paste."

As Jake was one of the quickest and most precise of workers at anything
he understood, this astonishing offer struck the other two as quite
feasible. The paper was procured, the furniture moved back, and a
transformation made in the room in question which astonished even those
concerned in it. Dawn rose upon the completed work and, the
self-possession of all three having been restored with the burning up of
such scraps as remained after the four walls were covered, they each
went to their several beds for a half-hour of possible rest. Jake's was
in Number 3. He has never said what that half-hour was to him!

The rest we know. The scheme did not fully succeed, owing to the
interest awakened in one man's mind by the beauty and seeming truth of
Miss Demarest. Investigation followed which roused the landlord to the
danger threatening them from the curiosity of Hammersmith, and it being
neck or nothing with him, he planned the deeper crime of burning up room
and occupant before further discoveries could be made. What became of
him in the turmoil which followed, no one could tell, not even Jake.
They had been together in Jake's room before the latter ran out with his
gun, but beyond that the clerk knew nothing. Of Mrs. Quimby he could
tell more. She had not been taken into their confidence regarding the
fire, some small grains of humanity remaining in her which they feared
might upset their scheme. She had only been given some pretext for
locking Huldah in her room, and it was undoubtedly her horror at her own
deed when she saw to what it had committed her which unsettled her brain
and made her a gibbering idiot for life.

Or was it some secret knowledge of her husband's fate, unknown to
others? We cannot tell, for no sign nor word of Jacob Quimby ever came
to dispel the mystery of his disappearance.

And this is the story of Three Forks Tavern and the room numbered 3.

MIDNIGHT IN BEAUCHAMP ROW

It w