By and by a cow-bell bellowed, not rang, in the lounging hall below. The traveler turned over once more, yawned, slumbered again. After a time—the clock knew how long—, a conch-shell thrust up the gangway roared; and the sleeper, thinking it a through freight, pushed on, making for the next station. Another silence. At last, behold, Madame Calico stood at the foot of the gangway, and shouted: “Air you a-gona git up to-day? Ur do ye want me to git yer breakfas’ and then drag ye out’n the bed, an’ put yer cloze on ye, an’ wash ye, an’ chaw yer victuals fur ye?” “I’ll be down in a moment, Madam,” the traveler answered. “Ever’body but you has eat an’ gone, an’ done furgot hit, by this time,” she replied. “You’ll fin’ the wash-pan a-settin’ on the porch.” He arose, dressed hurriedly, made his way down, and by raking around on the “porch,” finally stumbled against the wash-pan. The morning was still dark, but a gray spot was in the eastern sky—daylight was on its way to “the finest hotel.” Toilet finished, with the aid of his handkerchief in place of a towel, he began wondering where the dining-room could be. He heard no footsteps about the “hotel,” and search revealed neither kitchen nor fire. Peering around, he at last caught sight of smoke curling up from a stick-and-clay chimney some hundred yards away, beyond a bay of the weedy sea he had crossed the evening before. Parting the weeds overhanging the path was much like swimming across. Breakfast—varied, wholesome, well-cooked—was on the table—had been for an hour or more. Madame Calico, first seeing him seated and busy, then remarked, “You’ll jist have to wait on yerself, but I reckin ye ain’t noways bashful. I’ll have to go back to the hotel to clean up atter ye. It’s a blessed thing the mill’s shot down, fur we couldn’t a-had no sich layin’ up in the bed a-soakin’ an’ a-sobbin’ this time o’ day, ’way hyer might’ nigh dinner.” He was not sorry to make his meal in silence, peace and the landlady’s absence. Breakfast finished, the guest made his way back toward his lodging place. Turning the corner and confronting the entrance, he read, on a board over the shed, the name of “the finest hotel,” “Traveler’s Rest;” and immediately, by the law of contrast, his memory reverted to the garret, the snoring, Bill Ed and the “empty bed,”—to the hand-bell, the cow-bell and the conch-shell. Just before he paid his bill and left, in quest of a turnout for the day’s drive, Madame Calico, still in the act of cleaning up, favored him with her views on affairs in and about Montvale, and divers and sundry bits of information—some of a startling kind. “No,” she said, “the hotel business don’t amount to nothin’ much sence the mill ’uz shot down. Wunst in a while some feller comes stragglin’ along way hyander in the night, when all honest white folks is asleep, but the trouble o’ waitin’ on ’im an’ cleanin’ up atter ’im’s more’n the pay.