THE FRAMED DOORS.

Hastings Standard, Volume XIII, Issue 4310, 13 November 1909, Page 4 (Supplement)

THE FRAMED DOORS.

A BOSTON EXPERIENCE

My fellow-passenger, whom we shall call M'Naugliten, had come from New York to Boston with a comrade, seeking work. They were a pair of rattling blades; and, leaving their baggage at tlia station, passed the day in beer saloons, and with congenial spirits, until midnight struck. Then they applied themselves to find a lodging, and walked the streets till two, knocking at .houses of entertainment and being refused admittance, or themselves declining the terms. By two the inspiration of their liquor had begun to wear off : they were weary and humble, and after a great circuit found themselves in the same street where they had begun their search, and in front of a French hotel where they had already sought accommodation. Seeing the house still open, they returned to the charge. A man in a, white cap sat in an office by the door. Me seemed to welcome them more warmly than when they had first presented themselves, and the charge for the night had .somewhat unaccountably fallen from a dollar to a quarter. They thought him ill-looking, but paid their quarter a piece ,and were shown upstairs to the top of the house. There, in a small room, the man in the whito cup wished them pleasant slumbers.

lt was furnished with a bed, a chair, and some conveniences. The door did not lock on the inside : and the only sign of adornment vras a couple of framed pictures, one close above the head of the bed, and the other opposite the foot, and both curtained, as we may sometimes see valuable water-colours, or the portraits of the dead, or works of art more than usually skittish in the subject. It was, perhaps, in the hope of finding something of this last description that M'Naught-en's comrade pulled a.'iide the the curtain of the first. Ho was startling]y disappointed. There was no picture. The frame surrounded, and the curtain was designed to hide, an oblong aperture in the partition, through which they looked forth into the dark corridor. A person standing Without could easily take a purse from under the pillow, or even strangle a .sleeper as ho lay abed. M'Naugliten and Ins comrade stared at each other like \ asoo's E'ame'n, "with a wild surmise:" and then the latter, catching up the lamp,_ ran to the other frame and roughly raised tile curtain. There he stood petrified; and M'Naugliten, who had followed, grasped him by the wrist in terror. r I hey could see intr> another room, larger in .size than that which they occupied, where three men sat crouching and silent in the dark. For •! second or so these five persons looked enph other in the eyes, then the curtain was dropped, and M'Naugliten and his friend made but one holt of it out of the room and downstairs. The man in the white cap said nothing as they passed him ; and they were so pleased to bo once more in the open night that they gave up all notion of a bed. and walked the streets of Boston till the lvorninsf. —From •' Essays of Travel," by 11. L. Stevenson.