rse, no fireplace, but the stove was handsome and
rather old--a cast-iron erection, on the side of which was a
representation of Abraham sacrificing Isaac, and the inscription, "1 Bog
Mose, Cap. 22," above. Nothing else in the room was remarkable; the only
interesting picture was an old coloured print of the town, date about
1820.

Supper-time was approaching, but when Anderson, refreshed by the
ordinary ablutions, descended the staircase, there were still a few
minutes before the bell rang. He devoted them to examining the list of
his fellow-lodgers. As is usual in Denmark, their names were displayed
on a large blackboard, divided into columns and lines, the numbers of
the rooms being painted in at the beginning of each line. The list was
not exciting. There was an advocate, or Sagfoerer, a German, and some
bagmen from Copenhagen. The one and only point which suggested any food
for thought was the absence of any Number 13 from the tale of the rooms,
and even this was a thing which Anderson had already noticed half a
dozen times in his experience of Danish hotels. He could not help
wondering whether the objection to that particular number, common as it
is, was so widespread and so strong as to make it difficult to let a
room so ticketed, and he resolved to ask the landlord if he and his
colleagues in the profession had actually met with many clients who
refused to be accommodated in the thirteenth room.

He had nothing to tell me (I am giving the story as I heard it from him)
about what passed at supper, and the evening, which was spent in
unpacking and arranging his clothes, books, and papers, was not more
eventful. Toward eleven o'clock he resolved to go to bed, but with him,
as with a good many other people nowadays, an almost necessary
preliminary to bed, if he meant to sleep, was the reading of a few pages
of print, and he now remembered that the particular book which he had
been reading in the train, and which alone would satisfy him at that
present moment, was in the pocket of his greatcoat, then hanging on a
peg outside the dining-room.

To run down and secure it was the work of a moment, and, as the
passages were by no means dark, it was not difficult for him to find his
way back to his own door. So, at least, he thought; but when he arrived
there, and turned the handle, the door entirely refused to open, and he
caught the sound of a hasty movement toward it from within. He had tried
the wrong door, of cours