er had had a chill. Miserable, weak as a small boy, he had
curled up on the bottom of the car, his head on the seat, and gone to
sleep. She was alone. The mile-posts went by slowly. The posts said
there was a town ahead called Pellago, but it never came----

And when it did come she was too tired to care. In a thick dream she
drove through midnight streets of the town. In stupid paralysis she
kicked at the door of the galvanized-iron-covered garage. No answer. She
gave it up. She drove down the street and into the yard of a hotel
marked by a swing sign out over the plank sidewalk. She got out the
traveling bags, awakened her father, led him up on the porch.

The Pellago Tavern was a transformed dwelling house. The pillars of the
porch were aslant, and the rain-warped boards snapped beneath her feet.
She hesitatingly opened the door. The hallway was dark and musty. A
sound like a moan filtered down the unlighted stairs.

There seemed to be light in the room on the right. Trying to assure
herself that her father was a protection, she pushed open the door. She
looked into an airless room, scattered with rubber boots, unsavory old
corduroy caps, tattered magazines. By the stove nodded a wry-mouthed,
squat old woman, and a tall, cheaply handsome man of forty. Tobacco
juice stained the front of his stiff-bosomed, collarless shirt. His
hands were white but huge.

The old woman started. "Well?"

"I want to get two rooms for the night, please."

The man smirked at her. The woman creaked, "Well, I don't know. Where d'
you come from, heh?"

"We're motoring through."

"Heh? Who's that man?"

"He's my father, madam."

"Needn't to be so hoity-toity about it, 'he's my father, madam!' F' that
matter, that thing there is my husband!"

The man had been dusting his shabby coat, stroking his mustache, smiling
with sickly gallantry. He burbled, "Shut up, Teenie. This lady is all
right. Give her a room. Number 2 is empty, and I guess Number 7 has been
made up since Bill left--if 'tain't, the sheets ain't been slept on but
one night."

"Where d' you come----"

"Now don't go shooting off a lot of questions at the lady, Teenie. I'll
show her the rooms."

The woman turned on her husband. He was perhaps twenty-five years
younger; a quarter-century less soaked in hideousness. Her yellow,
concave-sided teeth were bared at him, her mouth drew up on one side
above the gums. "Pete, if I hear one word more out of you, out you go.
Lad