The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel B0082RD4EM

piazza, and tried the front door, which was locked. With the saddle still on his shoulders, he stepped into the middle of the street to reconnoitre the premises. A man and two women suddenly showed themselves at an open window in the second story. Lynde was about to address them when the man cried out—
    "Oh, you're a horse, I suppose. Well, there isn't any oats for you here.
You had better trot on!"
    Lynde did not relish this pleasantry; it struck him as rather insolent; but he curbed his irritation, and inquired as politely as he could if a horse or any kind of vehicle could be hired in the village.
    The three persons in the window nodded to one another significantly, and began smiling in a constrained manner, as if there were something quite preposterous in the inquiry. The man, a corpulent, red-faced person, seemed on the point of suffocating with merriment.
    "Is this a public house?" demanded Lynde severely.
    "That's as may be," answered the man, recovering his breath, and becoming grave.
    "Are you the proprietor?"
    "That's jest what I am."
    "Then I require of you the accommodation which is the right of every traveller. Your license does not permit you to turn any respectable stranger from your door."
    "Now, my advice to you," said the man, stepping back from the window, "my advice to you is to trot. You can't get in here. If you try to, I'll pepper you as sure as you live, though I wouldn't like to do it. So trot right along!"
    The man had a gun in his hands; he clutched it nervously by the stock; his countenance worked strangely, and his small, greenish eyes had a terrified, defiant expression. Indisputably, the tavern-keeper looked upon Lynde as a dangerous person, and was ready to fire upon him if he persisted in his demands.
    "My friend," said Lynde through his set teeth, "if I had you down here
I'd give you a short lesson in manners."
    "I dare say! I dare say!" cried the man, flourishing the shot-gun excitedly.
    Lynde turned away disgusted and indignant; but his indignation was neutralized by his astonishment at this incomprehensible brutality. He had no resource but to apply to some private house and state his predicament. As that luckless saddle had excited the derision of the girl, and drawn down on him the contumely of the tavern-keeper, he looked around for some safe spot in which to deposit it before it brought him into further disgrace. His linen and all his worldly possessions, except his money, which he carried on his person, were in the valise; he could not afford to lose that.
    The sun was high by this time, and the heat would have been intolerable if it had not been for a merciful breeze which swept down from the cooler atmosphere of the hills. Lynde wasted half an hour or more seeking a hiding-place for the saddle. It had grown a grievous burden to him; at every step it added a pound to its dead weight. He saw no way of relieving himself of it. There it was perched upon his shoulders, like the Old Man of the Sea on the back of Sindbad the Sailor. In sheer despair Lynde flung down his load on the curb-stone at a corner formed by a narrow street diagonally crossing the main thoroughfare, which he had not quitted. He drew out his handkerchief and wiped the heavy drops of perspiration from his brows. At that moment he was aware of the presence of a tall, cadaverous man of about forty, who was so painfully pinched and emaciated that a sympathetic shiver ran over Lynde as he glanced at him. He was as thin as an exclamation point. It seemed to Lynde that the man must be perishing with cold even in that burning June sunshine. It was not a man, but a skeleton.
    "Good heavens, sir!" cried Lynde. "Tell me where I am! What is the name of this town?"
    "Constantinople."
    "Constan"—
    "—tinople," added the man briskly. "A stranger here?"
    "Yes," said Lynde abstractedly. He was busy running over an imaginary map of the State of New Hampshire in search of Constantinople.
    "Good!" exclaimed the anatomy, rustling his dry palms together, "I'll employ you."
    "You'll employ me? I like that!"
    "Certainly. I'm a ship-builder."
    "I didn't know they built vessels a hundred miles from the coast," said
Lynde.
    "I am building a ship—don't say I'm not!"
    "Of course I know nothing about it."
    "A marble ship."
    "A ship to carry marble?"
    "No, a ship made of marble; a passenger ship. We have ships of iron, why not of marble?" he asked fiercely.
    "Oh, the fellow is mad!" said Lynde to himself, "as mad as a loon;