stage roll away, taking a parting look at the gallant expressman as he
hung on the top rail with one leg, and lit his cigar from the pipe of a
running footman. I then turned toward the Wingdam Temperance Hotel.

It may have been the weather, or it may have been the pie, but I was not
impressed favorably with the house. Perhaps it was the name extending
the whole length of the building, with a letter under each window,
making the people who looked out dreadfully conspicuous. Perhaps it was
that "Temperance" always suggested to my mind rusks and weak tea. It was
uninviting. It might have been called the "Total Abstinence" Hotel,
from the lack of anything to intoxicate or inthrall the senses. It was
designed with an eye to artistic dreariness. It was so much too large
for the settlement, that it appeared to be a very slight improvement
on out-doors. It was unpleasantly new. There was the forest flavor of
dampness about it, and a slight spicing of pine. Nature outraged,
but not entirely subdued, sometimes broke out afresh in little round,
sticky, resinous tears on the doors and windows. It seemed to me that
boarding there must seem like a perpetual picnic. As I entered the door,
a number of the regular boarders rushed out of a long room, and set
about trying to get the taste of something out of their mouths, by
the application of tobacco in various forms. A few immediately ranged
themselves around the fireplace, with their legs over each other's
chairs, and in that position silently resigned themselves to
indigestion. Remembering the pie, I waived the invitation of the
landlord to supper, but suffered myself to be conducted into the
sitting-room. "Mine host" was a magnificent-looking, heavily bearded
specimen of the animal man. He reminded me of somebody or something
connected with the drama. I was sitting beside the fire, mutely
wondering what it could be, and trying to follow the particular chord
of memory thus touched, into the intricate past, when a little