t, while gazing at the strollers, it
would have puzzled a customer, though but a "sketch and outline" of a
man, to have slipped in or out. Dashing as in review before the rank
and file of the village, the coach, with an extra flourish, rattled up
to the hotel, a low but generous-sized edifice, with a wide,
comfortable veranda, upon the railing of which was an array of boots,
and behind them a number of disconsolate-looking teamsters.

"You want to register, do you?" said the landlord in answer to Barnes'
inquiry, as the latter entered the office, the walls of which were
covered with advertisements of elections, auctions, sales of stock,
lands and quack medicines.

"We don't keep no register," continued the landlord, "but I guess we
can accommodate you, although the house is rather full with the
fellers from the ark. Or," he added, by way of explanation in answer
to the manager's look of surprise, "Philadelphia freight wagons, I
suppose you would call them. But we speak of them as arks, because
they take in all creation. Them's the occupants, making a Mount Ararat
of the porch. They're down-hearted, because they used to liquor up
here and now they can't, for the town's temperance."

"I trust, nevertheless, you are prepared for a season of legitimate
drama," suggested Barnes.

The other shook his head dubiously. "The town's for lectures clear
through," he answered. "They've been making a big fuss about show
folks."

The manager's countenance did not fall, however, upon hearing
this announcement; on the contrary, it shed forth inscrutable
satisfaction.

No sooner were they settled in far from commodious quarters than
preparations for the future were seriously begun; and now the drama
proceeded apace, with Barnes, the moving spirit. Despite his assertion
that he was no scholar, the manager's mind was the storehouse of a
hundred plays, and in that depository were many bags of gold and many
bags of chaff. From this accumulation he drew freely, frankly, in the
light-fingered fashion of master playwrights and lesser theatrical
thimble-riggers.

Before the manager was a table--the stage!--upon which were scattered
miscellaneous articles, symbols of life and character. A stately
salt-cellar represented the leading lady; a pepper box, the irascible
father; a rotund mustard pot, the old woman; a long, slim cruet, the
_ingenue_; and a pewter spoon, the lover.

Barnes gravely demonstrated the action of the scene to Saint-P