oorway.

"Come to supper," said he surlily.

Bob ducked his head to enter a long, low room. Its walls were of the
rough logs; its floor of hewn timbers; its ceiling of round beams on
which had been thrown untrimmed slabs as a floor to the loft above. A
board table stood in the centre of this, flanked by homemade chairs and
stools of all varieties of construction. A huge iron cooking stove
occupied all of one end--an extraordinary piece of ordnance. The light
from a single glass lamp cast its feeble illumination over coarse dishes
steaming with food.

Bob bowed politely to the two women, who stood, their arms crossed on
their stomachs, without deigning his salutation the slightest attention.
The children, of all sizes and ages, stared at him unblinking. The two
men shuffled to their seats, without looking up at the visitor. Only the
old man vouchsafed him the least notice....

"Set thar!" he growled, indicating a stool.

Bob found on the board that abundance and variety which always so much
surprises the stranger to a Sierra mountaineer's cabin. Besides the
usual bacon, beans, and bread, there were dishes of canned string-beans
and corn, potatoes, boiled beef, tomatoes and pressed glass dishes of
preserves. Coffee, hot as fire, and strong as lye, came in thick china
cups without handles.

The meal went forward in absolute silence, which Bob knew better than to
interrupt. It ended for each as he or she finished eating. The two women
were left at the last quite alone. Bob followed his host to the veranda.
There he silently offered the old man a cigar; the younger men had
vanished.

Samuels took the cigar with a grunt of thanks, smelled it carefully, bit
an inch off the end, and lit it with a slow-burning sulphur match. Bob
also lit up.

For one hour and a half--two cigars apiece--the two sat side by side
without uttering a syllable. The velvet dark drew close. The heavens
sparkled as though frosted with light. Bob, sitting tight on what he
knew was the one and only plan to accomplish his purpose, began to
despair of his chance. Of his companion he could make out dimly only the
white of his hair and beard, the glowing fire of his cigar. Inside the
house the noises made by the inhabitants thereof increased and died
away; evidently the household was seeking its slumber. A tree-toad
chirped, loudest in all the world of stillness.

Suddenly, without warning, the old man scraped back his chair. Bob's
heart leaped. Wa