without saying anything took the pen and started to register. He had to
stop, however, for Tracey was pressing him so close upon the right that
he couldn't get any play for his elbow, and after a minute or two he
asked Tracey politely would he mind stepping round to the left, where
he could see just as well. So Tracey did. Then he wrote his name in a
good round hand: "Nathaniel Duncan, N.Y."

"I'd like a room with a bath," he told Will: "something simple and
chaste, within the means of a man in moderate circumstances."

Will thought he was joking at first, but he didn't smile, so Will
explained that there was a bathroom on the third floor at the end of
the hall, though there wasn't much call for it. "I could give you a
room next to that," he said, "but you wouldn't want it, I guess."

"Why not?" asked The Mysterious Stranger.

"Because," said Will, "'taint near the sample-room."

"That doesn't make any difference; I'm on the wagon."

The only sense Will could get out of that was that the young man was
travelling for a buggy house and hadn't brought any samples with him.
"I thought," he allowed, "as how you'd be wantin' a place to display
your samples, but of course if you're in the wagon business--"

"Oh," said Mr. Duncan, "I thought you meant the 'sample-room' over
there." He nodded toward the bar. "That's what you call the
dispensaries of intoxicating liquors in this part of the country, is it
not?"