is to load and unload Smith. In an hour and a half, at the outside, I'll be back, and it looks like a dead certainty we'll be marooned here all night and maybe all tomorrow and, for all I know, a whole week. Oodles of time for detective work. But to tell you the honest truth, Hatton, I don't see why you plague yourself about that boat business. Don't look so bilious. You'll have some fun before you die."
Legs quieted down and Hardy was busy with his own thoughts till the pair reached the Sir Walter Raleigh Tavern, a dilapidated two-story building just opposite the general merchandise store known as "The Emporium," which latter also housed the postoffice. Through this last fact the loafers on the Raleigh porch had the tremendous advantage of gazing on every man, woman, and child in the village at some period of the day. The newcomers passed some of these idle gentry as they entered the doorway and found themselves in a long dining room, one corner of which served as the office of the landlord, the principal function of whose desk seemed the support of his pair of very dirty boots.
Of the eight tables, one was occupied by a tall
