"Jist step in here," said Mrs. Danforth, opening this door, "jist come in, and take off your things, and lop down, if you're a mind to, while we're a getting supper."
    I followed her into the room, if room it might be called, a strip partitioned off, just six feet wide, so that a bed was accurately fitted in at each end, and a square space remained vacant between the two.
    "We've been getting this room made lately, and I tell you it's real nice, so private, like!" said our hostess, with a complacent air. "Here," she continued, "in this bed the gals sleeps, and that's my bed and the old man's; and then here's a trundle-bed for Sally and Jane," and suiting the action to the word, she drew out the trundle-bed as far as our standing-place would allow, to show me how convenient it was.
    Here was my grand problem still unsolved! If "me and the old man," and the girls, and Sally and Jane, slept in this strip, there certainly could be no room for more, and I thought with dismay of the low-browed roof, which had seemed to me to rest on the tops of the window-frames. And, to make a long story short, though manifold were the runnings up and down, and close the whisperings before all was ready, I was at length ushered up a steep and narrow stick-ladder, into the sleeping apartment. Here, surrounded by beds of all sizes spread on the floor, was a bedstead, placed under the peak of the roof, in order to gain space for its height, and round this state-bed, for such it evidently was, although not supplied with pillows at each end, all the men and boys I had seen below stairs, were to repose. Sundry old quilts were fastened by forks to the rafters in such a way as to serve as a partial screen, and with this I was obliged to be content. Excessive fatigue is not fastidious. I called to mind some canal-boat experiences, and resigned myself to the "honey-heavy dew of slumber."
    I awoke with a sense of suffocation--started up--all was dark as the Hall of Eblis. I called--no answer came; I shrieked! and up ran one of the "gals."
    "What on airth's the matter?"
    "Where am I? What ails me?" said I, beginning to feel a little awkward when I heard the damsel's voice.
    "Why, I guess you was scairt, wa' n't ye?"
    "Why am I in the dark? Is it morning?"
    "Morning? why, the boys has been gone away this hour, and, you see, there ain't no winder up here, but I'll take down this here quilt, and then I guess you'll be able to see some."