"See here, young feller. Don't get gay. Hit that gourd of yours another crack and maybe you'll knock some sense into it. We're six hours late, ain't we? We got three hours to make Kalamazoo in, ain't we? This show's got to get there on time, or there'll be H to pay and no pitch hot. Now go outside and stand in a door somewheres and let the wind blow through you. I'll wire you in the morning, or you can take the 5.40 and pick your trunk up at Kalamazoo.--Let her go, Johnny"--this to the engine-driver. "All aboard!" Steve jerked a cigar from his waistcoat pocket, cut off the end, and said, with a bite-in-two-ten-penny-nail expression about his lips: "Steve, you're 'it.' I'll git that trunk at Kalamazoo." Then he crossed the platform, made his way to the street entrance, and stepped into the omnibus of the only hotel in the town. When the swinging sign of the Two-dollar House, blurred in the whirl of the storm, hove in sight, Steve's face was still knotted in wrinkles. He had a customer in this town good for three hundred dozen table cutlery, and but for "this gang of cross-tie steppers," he said to himself, he would.... Here the hind heels of the 'bus hit the curb, cutting short Steve's anathema. The drummer picked up his grip and made his way to the desk. "What's the matter, Stevey?" asked Larry, the clerk. "You look sour." "Sour? I am a green pickle, Larry, that's what I am--a green pickle. Been waiting five hours for my trunk in that oriental palm garden of yours you call a station. It was aboard a Special loaded with chorus girls and props. Conductor wouldn't dump it, and now it's gone on to Kalamazoo and----" "Oh, but you'll get it all right. All you've got to do, Steve, is to----" "Get it! Yes, when the daisies are blooming over us. I want it _now_, Larry. Whenever I run up against anything solid it's always one of these fly-by-nights. What do you think of going upstairs in the dark and hauling out a red silk hat and a pair of gilt slippers, instead of a sample card of carvers? Well, that's what a guy did for me last fall down at Logansport. Sent me two burial caskets full of chorus-girl props instead of my trunk. Oh, yes, I'll _get_ it--get it in the neck. Here, send this grip to my room." The clerk pursed his lips and looked over his key-rack. He knew that he had no room--none that would suit Stephen Dodd--had known it when he saw him entering the door, the snow covering his hat and shoulders, his grip in his hands. "Going to stay all night with us, Stephen?" Larry asked. "Sure! What do you think I'm here for? Blowing and snowing outside fit to beat the band. What do you want me to do--bunk in the station?" "H'm, h'm," muttered the clerk, studying the key-rack and name-board as if they were plans of an enemy's country. Steve looked up. When a clerk began to say "H'm," Steve knew something was wrong. "Full?"