bespoken apartments
to pass the night in their carriages at the inn doors. As for the lower
sort of strangers, I myself have often seen them, at that full time,
sleeping out on the doorsteps for want of a covered place to creep
under. Rich as he was, Arthur's chance of getting a night's lodging
(seeing that he had not written beforehand to secure one) was more than
doubtful. He tried the second hotel, and the third hotel, and two of the
inferior inns after that, and was met everywhere with the same form of
answer. No accommodation for the night of any sort was left. All the
bright golden sovereigns in his pocket would not buy him a bed at
Doncaster in the race-week.

To a young fellow of Arthur's temperament, the novelty of being turned
away into the street like a penniless vagabond, at every house where he
asked for a lodging, presented itself in the light of a new and highly
amusing piece of experience. He went on with his carpet-bag in his hand,
applying for a bed at every place of entertainment for travelers that
he could find in Doncaster, until he wandered into the outskirts of the
town.

By this time the last glimmer of twilight had faded out, the moon was
rising dimly in a mist, the wind was getting cold, the clouds were
gathering heavily, and there was every prospect that it was soon going
to rain!

The look of the night had rather a lowering effect on young Holliday's
spirits. He began to contemplate the houseless situation in which he was
placed from the serious rather than the humorous point of view, and he
looked about him for another public house to inquire at with something
very like downright anxiety in his mind on the subject of a lodging for
the night. The suburban part of the town toward which he had now strayed
was hardly lighted at all, and he could see nothing of the houses as he
passed them, except that they got progressively smaller and dirtier the
further he went. Down the winding road before him shone the dull gleam
of an oil lamp, the one faint lonely light that struggled ineffectually
with the foggy darkness all round him. He resolved to go on as far as
this lamp, and then, if it showed him nothing in the shape of an inn,
to return to the central part of the town, and to try if he could not
at least secure a chair to sit down on through the night at one of the
principal hotels.

As he got near the lamp he heard voices, and, walking close under it,
found that it lighted the entrance to a