comrade now hastening down the narrow
passage to the wider hall in front. Had it occurred to him to turn again
before rounding the corner--but no, I doubt if he would have learned
anything even then. The closing of a door by a careful hand--the
slipping up behind him of an eager and noiseless step--what is there in
these to re-awaken curiosity and fix suspicion? Nothing, when the man
concerned is Jacob Quimby; nothing. Better that he failed to look back;
it left his judgment freer for the question confronting him in the room
below.

Three Forks Tavern has been long forgotten, but at the time of which I
write it was a well-known but little-frequented house, situated just
back of the highway on the verge of the forest lying between the two
towns of Chester and Danton in southern Ohio. It was of ancient build,
and had all the picturesquesness of age and the English traditions of
its original builder. Though so near two thriving towns, it retained its
own quality of apparent remoteness from city life and city ways. This in
a measure was made possible by the nearness of the woods which almost
enveloped it; but the character of the man who ran it had still more to
do with it, his sympathies being entirely with the old, and not at all
with the new, as witness the old-style glazing still retained in its
ancient doorway. This, while it appealed to a certain class of summer
boarders, did not so much meet the wants of the casual traveller, so
that while the house might from some reason or other be overfilled one
night, it was just as likely to be almost empty the next, save for the
faithful few who loved the woods and the ancient ways of the
easy-mannered host and his attentive, soft-stepping help. The building
itself was of wooden construction, high in front and low in the rear,
with gables toward the highway, projecting here and there above a strip
of rude old-fashioned carving. These gables were new, that is, they were
only a century old; the portion now called the extension, in the
passages of which we first found the men we have introduced to you, was
the original house. Then it may have enjoyed the sunshine and air of the
valley it overlooked, but now it was so hemmed in by yards and
outbuildings as to be considered the most undesirable part of the house,
and Number 3 the most undesirable of its rooms; which certainly does not
speak well for it.

But we are getting away from our new friends and their mysterious
errand. As