CHAPTER XV.

"SPOTTED."

When the bell of St. Cow's began ringing for Ritualistic
morning-service, with a sound as of some incontinently rambling dun
spinster of the lacteal herd--now near at hand in cracked dissonance, as
the wind blows hither; now afar, in tinkling distance, as the wind blows
hence--MONTGOMERY PENDRAGON was several miles away from Bumsteadville
upon his walking-match, with head already bumped like a pineapple, and
face curiously swelled, from amateur practice with the Indian Club.
Being by that time cold enough for breakfast, and willing to try the
virtues of some soothing application to his right eye, which, from a
bruise just below it, was nearly closed, the badly banged young man
suspended his murderous calisthenics at the door of a rustic hotel, and
there entered to secure a wayside meal.

The American country "hotel," or half-way house, is, perhaps, one of the
most depressing fictions ever encountered by stage-passenger, or
pedestrian afield: and depends so exclusively upon the imagination for
any earthly distinction from the retired and neglected private hiding-place
of some decayed and morbid agricultural family, that only the
conventional swing sign-board before the door saves the cognizant mind
from a painfully dense confusion. Smelling about equally of eternal
wash-day, casual cow-shed, and passing feather-bed, it sustains a lank,
middle-aged, gristly man to come out at the same hour every day and
grunt unintelligibly at the stage-driver, an expressionless boy in a
bandless straw-hat and no shoes to stare blankly from the doorway at
the same old pole-horse he has mechanically thus inspected from infancy,