lanced back in some alarm, but as I
gave no token of having noticed anything out of the ordinary, she
speedily resumed her way up-stairs. As the sounds I had heard proceeded
from above, I followed her with alacrity, but felt my enthusiasm
diminish somewhat when I found myself passing door after door down a
long hall to a room as remote as possible from what seemed to be the
living portion of the house.

"Is it necessary to put me off quite so far?" I asked, as my young
hostess paused and waited for me to join her on the threshold of the
most forbidding room it had ever been my fortune to enter.

The blush which mounted to her brow showed that she felt the situation
keenly.

"I am sure," she said, "that it is a matter of great regret to me to be
obliged to offer you so mean a lodging, but all our other rooms are out
of order, and I cannot accommodate you with anything better to-night."

"But isn't there some spot nearer you?" I urged. "A couch in the same
room with you would be more acceptable to me than this distant room."

"I--I hope you are not timid," she began, but I hastened to disabuse her
mind on this score.

"I am not afraid of any earthly thing but dogs," I protested warmly.
"But I do not like solitude. I came here for companionship, my dear. I
really would like to sleep with one of you."

This, to see how she would meet such urgency. She met it, as I might
have known she would, by a rebuff.

"I am very sorry," she again repeated, "but it is quite impossible. If I
could give you the comforts you are accustomed to, I should be glad, but
we are unfortunate, we girls, and--" She said no more, but began to busy
herself about the room, which held but one object that had the least
look of comfort in it. That was my trunk, which had been neatly placed
in one corner.

"I suppose you are not used to candles," she remarked, lighting what
struck me as a very short end, from the one she held in her hand.

"My dear," said I, "I can accommodate myself to much that I am not used
to. I have very few old maid's ways or notions. You shall see that I am
far from being a difficult guest."

She heaved a sigh, and then, seeing my eye travelling slowly over the
gray discolored walls which were not relieved by so much as a solitary
print, she pointed to a bell-rope near the head of the bed, and
considerately remarked:

"If you wish anything in the night, or are disturbed in any way, pull
that. It communicates with my ro