“Isn’t this a hotel?” I asked finally.

“Well, it is a sort of hotel,” said the voice, doubtfully.  My hesitation and prevarication had apparently not inspired my interlocutor with confidence in me.

“Then let me in.  I have just driven over from K——­ in this infernal rain.  I am wet through and through.”

“But what do you want here, at the Corners?  What’s your business?  People don’t come here, leastways in the middle of the night.”

“It isn’t in the middle of the night,” I returned, incensed.  “I come on business connected with the new road.  I’m the superintendent of the works.”

“Oh!”

“And if you don’t open the door at once, I’ll raise the whole neighborhood—­and then go to the other hotel.”

When I said that, I supposed Greenton was a village with a population of at least three or four thousand, and was wondering vaguely at the absence of lights and other signs of human habitation.  Surely, I thought, all the people cannot be abed and asleep at half past ten o’clock:  perhaps I am in the business section of the town, among the shops.

“You jest wait,” said the voice above.

This request was not devoid of a certain accent of menace, and I braced myself for a sortie on the part of the besieged, if he had any such hostile intent.  Presently a door opened at the very place where I least expected a door, at the farther end of the building, in fact, and a man in his shirt-sleeves, shielding a candle with his left hand, appeared on the threshold.  I passed quickly into the house, with Mr. Tobias Sewell (for this was Mr. Sewell) at my heels, and found myself in a long, low-studded bar-room.

There were two chairs drawn up before the hearth, on which a huge hemlock back-log was still smoldering, and on the unpainted deal counter contiguous stood two cloudy glasses with bits of lemon-peel in the bottom, hinting at recent libations.  Against the discolored wall over the bar hung a yellowed hand-bill, in a warped frame, announcing that “the Next Annual N.H.  Agricultural Fair” would take place on the 10th of September, 1841.  There was no other furniture or decoration in this dismal apartment, except the cobwebs which festooned the ceiling, hanging down here and there like stalactites.

Mr. Sewell set the candlestick on the mantel-shelf, and threw some pine-knots on the fire, which immediately broke into a blaze, and showed him to be a lank, narrow-chested man, past sixty, with sparse, steel-gray hair, and small, deep-set eyes, perfectly round, like a fish’s, and of no particular color.  His chief personal characteristics seemed to be too much feet and not enough teeth.  His sharply cut, but rather simple face, as he turned it towards me, wore a look of interrogation.  I replied to his mute inquiry by taking out my pocket-book and handing him my business-card, which he held up to the candle and perused with great deliberation.