made up our minds on the subject when the morning
stage came up at full speed and stopped at our gate.

"Hello!" cried the driver. He was not our driver. He was a tall man in
high boots, and had a great reputation as a manager of horses--so Danny
Carson told me afterward. There were two drivers on the line, and each
of them made one trip a day, going up one day in the afternoon, and down
the next day in the morning.

I went out to see what this driver wanted.

"Can't you give my passengers breakfast?" he asked.

"Why, no!" I exclaimed, looking at the stage loaded inside and out.
"This isn't a tavern. We couldn't get breakfast for a stage-load of
people."

"What have you got a sign up fur, then?" roared the driver, getting red
in the face.

"That's so," cried two or three men from the top of the stage. "If it
aint a tavern, what's that sign doin' there?"

I saw I must do something. I stepped up close to the stage and looked in
and up.

"Are there any sailors in this stage?" I said. There was no response.
"Any soldiers? Any farmers or mechanics?"

At the latter question I trembled, but fortunately no one answered.

"Then," said I, "you have no right to ask to be accommodated; for, as
you may see from the sign, our house is only for soldiers, sailors,
farmers, and mechanics."

"And besides," cried Euphemia from the piazza, "we haven't anything to
give you for breakfast."

The people in and on the stage grumbled a good deal at this, and looked
as if they were both disappointed and hungry, while the driver ripped
out an oath, which, had he thrown it across a creek, would soon have
made a good-sized millpond.

He gathered up his reins and turned a sinister look on me.

"I'll be even with you, yit," he cried as he dashed off.

In the afternoon Mrs. Carson came up and told us that the stage had
stopped there, and that she had managed to give the passengers some
coffee, bread and butter and ham and eggs, though they had had to
wait their turns for cups and plates. It appeared that the driver had
quarreled with the Lowry people that morning because the breakfast was
behindhand and he was kept waiting. So he told his passengers that there
was another tavern, a few miles down the road, and that he would take
them there to breakfast.

"He's an awful ugly man, that he is," said Mrs. Carson, "an' he'd better
'a' stayed at Lowry's, fur he had to wait a good sight longer, after
all, as it turned out. But he's dreadf