It was one of Sam’s theories that some day he would go in late to dinner, when there was no one else left in the great hall.  He would ask Nora to come to serve him.  Then he would grasp her hand, there as she stood by him, and he would pour forth to her the story of his long unuttered love.  And then—­but beyond this Sam could not think.  And never yet had he dared go into the dining hall and sit alone, though it was openly rumoured that such had been the ruse of Curly with the “littlest waiter girl,” before Curly had gone north on the Wyoming trail.

Accident sometimes accomplishes that which design fails to compass.  One day Sam was detained with a customer much later than his usual dinner hour.  Indeed, Sam had not been to dinner at the hotel for many days, a fact which the district physician at the railway might have explained.  “Of course,” said Sam, “I done the drivin’, an’ maybe that was why I got froze some more than Cap Franklin did, when we went down south that day.”  Frozen he had been, so that two of his fingers were now gone at the second joint, a part of his right ear was trimmed of unnecessary tissue, and his right cheek remained red and seared with the blister of the cold endured on that drive over the desolated land.  It was a crippled and still more timid Sam who, unwittingly very late, halted that day at the door of the dining-room and gazed within.  At the door there came over him a wave of recollection.  It seemed to him all at once that he was, by reason of his afflictions, set still further without the pale of any possible regard.  He dodged to his table and sat down without a look at any of his neighbours.  To him it seemed that Nora regarded him with yet more visible scornfulness.  Could he have sunk beneath the board he would have done so.  Naught but hunger made him bold, for he had lived long at his barn on sardines, cheese, and crackers.

One by one the guests at the tables rose and left the room, and one by one the waiter girls followed them.  The dining hour was nearly over.  The girls would go upstairs for a brief season of rest before changing their checked gingham mid-day uniform for the black gown and white apron which constituted the regalia for the evening meal, known, of course, as “supper.”  Sam, absorbed in his own misery and his own hunger, awoke with a start to find the great hall apparently quite deserted.

It is the curious faculty of some men (whereby scientists refer us to the ape) that they are able at will to work back and forth the scalp upon the skull.  Yet other and perhaps fewer men retain the ability to work either or both ears, moving them back and forth voluntarily.  It was Sam’s solitary accomplishment that he could thus move his ears.  Only by this was he set apart and superior to other beings.  You shall find of very many men but few able to do this thing.  Moreover, if you be curious in philosophy, it shall come to be fixed in your memory that woman is disposed to love not one who is like to many, but to choose rather one who is distinct, superior, or more fit than his fellow-men; it being ever the intent of Nature that the most excellent shall attract, and thus survive.