selves to find a lodging, and walked the streets
till two, knocking at houses of entertainment and being refused
admittance, or themselves declining the terms. By two the inspiration of
their liquor had begun to wear off; they were weary and humble, and
after a great circuit found themselves in the same street where they had
begun their search, and in front of a French hotel where they had
already sought accommodation. Seeing the house still open, they returned
to the charge. A man in a white cap sat in an office by the door. He
seemed to welcome them more warmly than when they had at first presented
themselves, and the charge for the night had somewhat unaccountably
fallen from a dollar to a quarter. They thought him ill-looking, but
paid their quarter apiece, and were shown upstairs to the top of the
house. There, in a small room, the man in the white cap wished them
pleasant slumbers.

The room was furnished with a bed, a chair, and some conveniences. The
door did not lock on the inside; and the only sign of adornment was a
couple of framed pictures, one close above the head of the bed, and the
other opposite the foot, and both curtained, as we may sometimes see
valuable water-colours, or the portraits of the dead, or works of art
more than usually skittish in the subject. It was perhaps in the hope of
finding something of this last description that M'Naughten's comrade
pulled aside the curtain of the first. He was startlingly disappointed.
There was no picture. The frame surrounded, and the curtain was designed
to hide, an oblong aperture in the partition, through which they looked
forth into the dark corridor. A person standing without could easily
take a purse from under the pillow, or even strangle a sleeper as he lay
abed. M'Naughten and his comrade stared at each other like Balboa and
his men, "with a wild surmise"; and then the latter, catching up the
lamp, ran to the other frame and roughly raised the curtain. There he
stood, petrified; and M'Naughten, who had followed, grasped him by the
wrist in terror. They could see into another room, larger in size than
that which they occupied, where three men sat crouching and silent in
the dark. For a second or so these five persons looked each other in the
eyes, then the curtain was dropped, and M'Naughten and his friend made
but one bolt of it out of the room and down the stairs. The man in the
white cap said nothing as they passed him; and they were so pleased to
b