“These Ashers,” said Crockett as he continued to gape at the door-knocker with an expression in which rapt fascination and shocked indignation seemed equally commingled. “They ain’t Froggies by any chance?”

“To the best of my knowledge,” I replied, “the family is of English descent.”

“Well,” muttered Crockett, “I’ll be hanged if I ever struck anything like it!” Then, grasping the elaborately wrought knocker, he pounded it repeatedly against the iron plate.

Crockett’s action was followed by a silence so prolonged that I was gripped with a dispiriting thought. Perhaps the inhabitants had ventured forth from their dwelling, and our journey had been for naught! At length, the frontiersman reached up for the knocker and, once again, announced our presence with a series of loud, insistent rappings—but to no more effect than before.

I had just turned to my companion and was on the brink of articulating my suspicion when I became cognizant of a series of distinctive noises from within the house: the shuffling of feet—the sliding of a bolt—the creaking of hinges. The door opened to a width of several inches, barely permitting me to perceive a singularly pallid visage peering out at us from the gloomy interior of the dwelling.

“What do you want?” demanded a voice that sounded as rusty and ill-accustomed to use as the door hinges.

“Good afternoon,” I replied in a tone of the utmost civility. “We wish to speak to the master of the house, Mr. Roger Asher.”

“Impossible!” cried the anaemic-faced individual. “He does not care to speak to you or anyone! Go away!” And with these intensely disagreeable words, he commenced to shut the door.

Before he could achieve this goal, however, Crockett extended a hand and, placing it flush against the door, prevented it from closing.

“Not so fast,” he exclaimed. “Me ’n’ my friend have done a sight o’ travellin’ to git here, and we ain’t of a mind to be treated in such an uncourteous style.”

“But you are not welcome here!” the other protested.

“That is as it may be. But Davy Crockett don’t cotton to such rudeness. It gets me hotter’n a curling tongs to be dealt with so perempterously!”

This fervent pronouncement appeared to give the pallid fellow pause. “Colonel David Crockett?” he inquired after a moment. “Of the state of Tennessee?”

“The one ’n’ only,” replied the frontiersman. “And this here’s my pard, Mr. Edgar Poe o’ Baltimore.”