And never yet had he dared go into the dining hall and sit alone, though it was openly rumoured that such had been the ruse of Curly with the "littlest waiter girl," before Curly had gone north on the Wyoming trail.
Accident sometimes accomplishes that which design fails to compass.
One day Sam was detained with a customer much later than his usual dinner hour.

Indeed, Sam had not been to dinner at the hotel for many days, a fact which the district physician at the railway might have explained.

"Of course," said Sam, "I done the drivin', an' maybe that was why I got froze some more than Cap Franklin did, when we went down south that day." Frozen he had been, so that two of his fingers were now gone at the second joint, a part of his right ear was trimmed of unnecessary tissue, and his right cheek remained red and seared with the blister of the cold endured on that drive over the desolated land.
It was a crippled and still more timid Sam who, unwittingly very late, halted that day at the door of the dining-room and gazed within.

At the door there came over him a wave of recollection.

It seemed to him all at once that he was, by reason of his afflictions, set still further without the pale of any possible regard.