fault with his coal, complained that there were too many
prehistoric toads in it._ --Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar


Tom flung himself on the sofa, and put his throbbing head in his hands,
and rested his elbows on his knees. He rocked himself back and forth and
moaned.

"I've knelt to a nigger wench!" he muttered. "I thought I had struck the
deepest depths of degradation before, but oh, dear, it was nothing to
this. . . . Well, there is one consolation, such as it is--I've struck
bottom this time; there's nothing lower."

But that was a hasty conclusion.

At ten that night he climbed the ladder in the haunted house, pale, weak,
and wretched. Roxy was standing in the door of one of the rooms,
waiting, for she had heard him.

This was a two-story log house which had acquired the reputation a few
years ago of being haunted, and that was the end of its usefulness.
Nobody would live in it afterward, or go near it by night, and most
people even gave it a wide berth in the daytime. As it had no
competition, it was called _the_ haunted house. It was getting crazy and
ruinous now, from long neglect. It stood three hundred yards beyond
Pudd'nhead Wilson's house, with nothing between but vacancy. It was the
last house in the town at that end.

Tom followed Roxy into the room. She had a pile of clean straw in the
corner for a bed, some cheap but well-kept clothing was hanging on the