"Thanks!" shouted the late passenger after the receding tail light, and dashed up the steps to the porch that ran the full length of Hart's Tavern. In the shelter of its low-lying roof, he stopped short and once more peered down the dark, rain-swept road. A flash of lightning revealed the flying automobile. He waited for a second flash. It came an instant later, but the car was no longer visible. He shook his head. "I hope the blamed old fool knows what he's doing, hitting it up like that over a wet road. There'll be a double funeral in this neck of the woods if anything goes wrong," he reflected. Still shaking his head, he faced the closed door of the Tavern. A huge, old-fashioned lantern hung above the portal, creaking and straining in the wind, dragging at its stout supports and threatening every instant to break loose and go frolicking away with the storm. The sound of the rain on the clap-board roof was deafening. At the lower end of the porch the water swished in with all the velocity of a gigantic wave breaking over a ship at sea. The wind howled, the thunder roared and almost like cannon-fire were the successive crashes of lightning among the trees out there in the path of fury. There were lights in several of the windows opening upon the porch; the wooden shutters not only were ajar but were banging savagely against the walls. Even in the dim, grim light shed by the lantern he could see that the building was of an age far beyond the ken of any living man. He recalled the words of the informing sign-post: "Established in 1798." One hundred and eighteen years old, and still baffling the assaults of all the elements in a region where they were never timid! It may, in all truth, be a "shindy," thought he, but it had led a gallant life. The broad, thick weather-boarding, overlapping in layers, was brown with age and smooth with the polishing of time and the backs, no doubt, of countless loiterers who had come and gone in the making of the narrative that Hart's Tavern could relate. The porch itself, while old, was comparatively modern; it did not belong to the century in which the inn itself was built, for in those far-off days men did not waste time, timber or thought on the unnecessary. While the planks in the floor were worn and the uprights battered and whittled out of their pristine shapeliness, they were but grandchildren to the parent building to which they clung. Stout and, beyond question, venerable benches stood close to the wall on both sides of the entrance. Directly over the broad, low door with its big wooden latch and bar, was the word "Welcome," rudely carved in the oak beam. It required no cultured eye to see that the letters had been cut, deep and strong, into the timber, not with the tool of the skilled wood carver but with the hunting knife of an ambitious pioneer.