After a quarter of an hour, we ceased to hasten, but we continued to knock intermittently. Then Toby blew the horn as viciously as she knew how. The silent town seemed to recoil from our rude noise and gather the bed quilts closer about it. But no response came from the hotel. From the second floor came sounds of slumbering. Becoming expert we counted three people asleep. The three snores dwindled to two snores and a cough, after our experiment with the horn, and later diminished to a cough and two voices, speaking in whispers. We wanted to call out that we knew they were awake, and why didn’t they come down and let us in, but we knew they had no intention of stirring. We were in a state of enraged helplessness. We rapped until it was quite apparent the hotel was resolved not to establish a dangerous precedent by admitting strangers after midnight. Then we gave up. But Orland owed us a bed and if we could we were going to exact it. We felt as if it were a duel between the town and ourselves. Our last knock brought a head from a little room over the store next door, and a woman’s voice called, “Who is it?” “Two ladies from Boston,” we answered, guilefully using the magic words which in happier climes had brought cheerful repartee and prompt sustenance. We did not get the expected reaction, but her tone was apprehensive, if kind, when she asked, “What do you want?” We told her, though she might have guessed. “Knock again,” she said. “There’s someone there. They ought to hear you.” “They hear us all right,” we said, loud enough for the cough and two voices not to miss, “but they won’t let us in. Do you know of any place where we can go?” “I’d take you in here,” said the voice,--the only sign of hospitality we had from Orland that night,--“but my husband and I have one room, and the children the other.” Even standing on an alien sidewalk at two-thirty A. M. in the rain we felt less forlorn now that we had someone to talk to. A male rumble made a quartette of our trio, which after a discussion, she reported. “_He_ says you might try Uncle Ollie’s.” Her voice implied she thought the suggestion barren. I dared not let her see we didn’t know Uncle Ollie for fear it might prejudice this suspicious hamlet against us. So I queried cautiously, “Now, just where does he live?” as if it had only slipped my mind for the moment. “Go down the road a piece and turn west,--it’s the second house. But I dunno whether you’ll be able to wake him. He’s kinder deaf.” We thanked her, and said goodnight and she wished us good luck. We bumped the damaged old lady down the main street, her thumpings making such a racket that we expected the constable to arrest us any moment for disturbing the peace. We had, however, no intention of trying Uncle Ollie’s.