The sign, if yuh remember, was the one we had up over the front door on the night he gave the great dance he’d built the house for. It was one uh these cloth boxes, with lamps inside, and it read: “Welcome to the Hall of Mirth” in letters you could read clear down to the first bend in the trail. It was sure gaudy and impressive, and it looked like a dance-hall sign—only Shooting-star never seemed to realize it. And as to the rooms, when the lamps was lit and all the big archways opened up, you could stand in the front door and look right down about seventy-five feet of insanity; through the big front parlor, and the back parlor, and the dining-room. And the farther yuh looked the crazier it got. Shooting-star sure had an eye for bright colors. Ellis and me didn’t hardly take time to feed the stock and eat our meals; and by the time the bride and groom was due, things was sure shining. When we lit the lamps and stood by the front door, just to see how she stacked up, we got so dizzy we had to grab hold uh the casing. Mister! it would throw a crimp into a blind man. Well, sir, she come. Ellis and me didn’t hardly believe she would, but she did, all right. Ellis drove up to the front door with ’em just after it got good and dark, and the sign was casting yellow light on the snow, and all the big bay windows oozing brightness around the edges—for I’d pulled the blinds, so she couldn’t see inside till she got in. Shooting-star helped her out like she was made uh glass, and led her up the steps, and: said: “Welcome to the Hall uh Mirth, Mrs. Wilson.” And Ellis and me hunched each other, and waited. Shooting-star throwed the door wide open, and pulled her in. And she give one look, and then yelled like we’d stuck a pin in her. And then she fell backward, and Ellis and me caught her—and she was plumb dead to the world. We packed her in and laid her on a sky-blue couch, and Ellis brought a bucket uh water and a dipper, while I undone her wraps. Old Shooting-star never done a blame thing but stand around in the way with his jaw hanging slack. Ellis and me sloshed water on her generous, and she come to enough to open her eyes and look around; but when she seen them walls, with that great, ungodly picture uh George Washington, she give another squawk, and come near going off again. Then she commenced to cry—and I want to tell yuh right now, that she had me going when she done that. She wasn’t no beauty, but she wasn’t as big a freak as we’d looked for her to be; and she was plumb scared at that house—and nobody blaming her but Shooting-star. He come up and took the slack out uh his jaw long enough to ask what ailed her; and when she just flinched away from him, like some horses do when yuh throw a saddle on their backs unexpected, Shooting-star looked plumb mad. “It’s this darn, crazy shack yuh brought her to,” snaps Ellis. “Yuh should ’a’ told her, and kinda prepared her for the worst, yuh two-faced old skate.”