d in wiry little
yellow curls. Mistress Inchbare's hard bones showed themselves, like
Mistress Inchbare's hard Presbyterianism, without any concealment or
compromise. In short, a savagely-respectable woman who plumed herself on
presiding over a savagely-respectable inn.

There was no competition to interfere with Mistress Inchbare. She
regulated her own prices, and made her own rules. If you objected to
her prices, and revolted from her rules, you were free to go. In other
words, you were free to cast yourself, in the capacity of houseless
wanderer, on the scanty mercy of a Scotch wilderness. The village of
Craig Fernie was a collection of hovels. The country about Craig Fernie,
mountain on one side and moor on the other, held no second house of
public entertainment, for miles and miles round, at any point of the
compass. No rambling individual but the helpless British Tourist wanted
food and shelter from strangers in that part of Scotland; and nobody
but Mistress Inchbare had food and shelter to sell. A more thoroughly
independent person than this was not to be found on the face of the
hotel-keeping earth. The most universal of all civilized terrors--the
terror of appearing unfavorably in the newspapers--was a sensation
absolutely unknown to the Empress of the Inn. You lost your temper,
and threatened to send her bill for exhibition in the public journals.
Mistress Inchbare raised no objection to your taking any course you
pleased with it. "Eh, man! send the bill whar' ye like, as long as ye
pay it first. There's nae such thing as a newspaper ever darkens my
doors. Ye've got the Auld and New Testaments in your bedchambers, and
the natural history o' Pairthshire on the coffee-room table--and if
that's no' reading eneugh for ye, ye may een gae back South again, and
get the rest of it there."

This was the inn at which Anne Silvester had appeared alone, with
nothing but a little bag in her hand. This was the woman whose
reluctance to receive her she innocently expected to overcome by showing
her purse.

"Mention your charge for the rooms," she said. "I am willing to pay for
them beforehand."

Her majesty, Mrs. Inchbare, never even looked at her subject's poor
little purse.

"It just comes to this, mistress," she answered. "I'm no' free to tak'
your money, if I'm no' free to let ye the last rooms left in the hoose.
The Craig Fernie hottle is a faimily hottle--and has its ain gude name
to keep up. Ye're ower-well-loo