"Well, all right," said the cook, spreading a napkin at one end of a long table; "you set down here and I’ll supply you in a few minutes. The landlord leaves me in charge here till he gets up. He’s a late sleeper; he was out last night at the trial of the moonshiners. You say you paid for breakfast in your bill. I think it’s a shame. If he wasn’t so easy to make mad, I’d go shake him up and get some of your money back. I don’t happen to tote the key to the cash-drawer. I reckon you paid seventy-five cents for supper, bed, and breakfast—’s., b., and b.,’ we call it for short—and you are entitled to a full round—meat, eggs, fish (in season), batter-cakes or waffles, whichever it is. Our waffle-irons are split right half in two, and we just give batter-cakes now; but folks know the brand clean to Darley. You ought to see the judge tackle ’em during court week; him and the district-attorney had a race the other night to see which could eat the most. I had three pans running, and such a smoke of burning lard in the kitchen you couldn’t have seen a white cat in an inch of your nose. The whole jury and a lots of witnesses under guard of the sheriff was allowed to look on. The judge beat. The lawyer got so full he couldn’t talk, and that was the signal to call a halt. I was glad, for old Mrs. Macklin was waiting in the kitchen to try to hear if there was any chance to save her son, who was being tried for killing that feller in the brick-yard last summer. Ever’ time I’d come in for fresh cakes she’d look up sorter pitiful-like to see if I’d heard anything. They’d already agreed to send ’im up for life, but I didn’t know it. Yes, you ought to have a quarter of that money back, _anyway_. Unless a knife and fork is used, I make a habit, when it’s left to me, not to charge a cent, and you don’t look like you are overly flush." "No, but I’m satisfied as it is," Jane said, as she finished her bread and milk. "I didn’t expect to get it for any less." XXXVIII A few minutes later, with her flabby carpet-bag on her sharp hip, Jane fared forth on the mountain road, which led farther eastward. She walked slowly and with increased effort, for the high altitude seemed to affect her respiration, and, light as it was, the carpet-bag became cumbersome and she had to pause frequently to rest. "Yes, if I’m going to do it, I’ll have to plunge in and do it, and be done with the matter," she kept saying. "I reckon it isn’t the first time such a thing has been heard of." She passed several humble mountain houses, built of logs, on the way, but stopped at none of them. The sun was near the zenith when she came to a double log-cabin standing back on a plot of newly cleared land a hundred yards from the rocky road. A tall, plain-looking girl, with a hard, unsympathetic face, stood in the doorway, and she stepped down to the ground and quieted a snarling dog which was chained to a stake driven into the earth. "I reckon you are Nettie Boyd, ain’t you?" Jane said.