The porter was now shaking the red-hot stove with a cast-iron crank the size and shape of a burglar's jimmy, the ashes falling on a square of zinc protecting the uncarpeted floor. Steve recognized the noise, and looking down over the hand-rail called out, pointing to the poster: "How far's this shebang?" "'Bout a block." "That settles it," said Steve to himself in the only contented tone of voice he had used since he entered the hotel. "I'll take this in." And continuing on downstairs, he dropped into a chair, completing the circle around the dispenser of comfort. The business of the hotel went on. Trains arrived and were met by the lumbering stage, the passengers landing in the snow on the sidewalk--some for supper, one or two for rooms. Supper was announced by a tight-laced blonde in white muslin, all hips and shoulders, throwing open the dining-room and mounting guard at the entrance, her face illumined by that knock-a-chip-off-my-shoulder expression common to her class. Instantly, and with a simultaneous scraping of chair legs, the segments of the circle around the stove flung themselves into the narrow passageway. Soon the racks were spotted with hats, their owners being drawn up in fours around the several tables--Steve one of them--the waiter-ladies serving with a sweetness of smile and elegance of manner found nowhere outside of a royal court, accompanied by a dignity of pose made all the more distinguished by a certain inward scoop of the back and instantaneous outward bulge below the waist line seen only in wax figures flanking a cloak counter. Steve had a steak, liver and bacon, apple pie, a cup of coffee, and a toothpick--all in ten minutes. Then he resumed his place by the stove, lit a cigar, and kept his eye on the clock. Three hours later Steve was again in his chair by the stove. He had been to the show and had sat through two hours of the performance. If his expression had savored of vinegar over the loss of his sample trunks, it was now double-proof vitriol! "Thought you was goin' to the show," grunted the porter between his jerks at the handle; he was again at the stove, the thermometer marking zero outside. "Been. Regular frost; buncoed out of fifty cents! That show is the limit! A couple of skinny-legged girls doing a clog stunt; a bag of bones in a low-necked dress playing Mrs. Langtry; and a wall-eyed clown that looked like a grave-digger. Rotten--worst I ever saw!" "Full house?" "Full of empties. 'Bout fifty people, I guess, counting deadheads--and ME." Steve accentuated this last word as if his fifty cents had been the only real income of the house. The outer door now opened, letting in a section of the north pole and a cough. Steve twisted around in his chair and recognized Jerry Gobo, the clown. His grease paint was gone, but his haggard features and the graveyard hack settled his identity.