"Dot's a goot sign," he pronounced. "Auf you go up te hill, tere ist
te house I put up mit te moofers. First house. All convenient. You
sthay tere. I coom along in te mornin'. Tere ist more as feefty
famblies sthop mit tat house. Oh, nien, I don't keep moofers mit te
tafern."

"This is a queer way to do," said Grandma Padgett, fixing the full
severity of her glasses on him. "Turn a woman and two children away
to harbor as well as they can in some old barn! I'll not stop in your
house on the hill. Who'd 'tend to the horses?"

"Tare ist grass and water," said the landlord as she turned from his
door. "And more as feefty famblies hast put up tere. I don't keep
moofers mit te tafern."

Robert and Corinne felt very homeless as she drove at a rattling
pace down the valley. They were hungry, and upon an unknown road; and
that inhospitable tavern had turned them away like vagrants.

"We'll drive all night before we'll stop in his movers' pen," said
Grandma Padgett with her well-known decision. "I suppose he calls
every vagabond that comes along a mover, and his own house is too
clean for such gentry. I've heard about the Swopes and the Dutch
being stupid, but a body has to travel before they know."

But well did the Dutch landlord know the persuasion of his house on
the hill after luckless travellers had passed through a stream which
drained the valley. This was narrow enough, but the very banks had a
caving, treacherous look. Grandma Padgett drove in, and the carriage
came down with a plunge on the flanks of Old Hickory and Old Henry,