Batcheldor bit off two-thirds and returned the balance. After adjusting the morsel so that it might interfere in the least degree with his vocal machinery, he drawled:
"I cal'late you ain't heard the news, Eri. Web Saunders has got his original-package license. It come on the noon mail."
The Captain turned sharply toward the speaker. "Is that a fact?" he asked. "Who told you?"
"See it myself. So did Squealer and a whole lot more. Web was showin' it round."
"We was wonderin'," said Jabez Smalley, a member of the committee whose standing was somewhat impaired, inasmuch as he went fishing occasionally and was, therefore, obliged to miss some of the meetings, "what kind of a fit John Baxter would have now. He's been pretty nigh distracted ever sence Web started his billiard room, callin' it a 'ha'nt of sin' and a whole lot more names. There ain't been a 'Come-Outers' meetin' 'sence I don't know when that he ain't pitched into that saloon. Now, when he hears that Web's goin' to sell rum, he'll bust a biler sure."
The committee received this prophecy with an hilarious shout of approval and each member began to talk. Captain Eri took advantage of this simultaneous expression of opinion to walk away. He looked in at the window of the ticket-office, exchanged greetings with Sam Hardy, the stationmaster, and then leaned against the corner of the building furthest removed from Mr. Wixon and his friends, lit his pipe and puffed thoughtfully with a troubled expression on his face.
From the clump of blackness that indicated the beginning of the West Orham woods came a long-drawn dismal "toot"; then two shorter ones. The committee sprang to its feet and looked interested. Sam Hardy came out of the ticket office. The stage-driver, a sharp-looking boy of about fourteen, with a disagreeable air of cheap smartness sticking out all over him, left his seat in the shadow of Mr. Batcheldor's manly form, tossed a cigarette stump away and loafed over to the vicinity of the "depot wagon," which was backed up against the platform. Captain Eri knocked the ashes from his pipe and put that service-stained veteran in his pocket. The train was really "coming in" at last.
If this had been an August evening instead of a September one, both train and platform would have been crowded. But the butterfly summer maiden had flitted and, as is his wont, the summer man had flitted after her, so the passengers who alighted from the two coaches that, with the freight car, made up the Orham Branch train, were few in number and homely in flavor. There was a very stout lady with a canvas extension case and an umbrella in one hand and a bulging shawl-strap and a pasteboard box in the other, who panted and wheezed like the locomotive itself and who asked the brakeman, "What on airth DO they have such high steps for?" There was a slim, not to say gawky, individual with a chin beard and rubber boots, whom the committee hailed as "Andy" and welcomed to its bosom. There were two young men, drummers, evidently, who nodded to Hardy, and seemed very much at home. Also, there was another young man, smooth-shaven and square-shouldered, who deposited a suit-case on the platform and looked about him with the air of being very far from home, indeed.
The drummers and the stout lady got into the stage. The young man with the suit-case picked up the latter and walked toward the same vehicle.
He accosted the sharp boy, who had lighted another cigarette.
"Can you direct me to the cable station?" he asked.
"Sure thing!" said the youth, and there was no Cape Cod twist to his accent. "Git aboard."
"I didn't intend to ride," said the stranger.
"What was you goin' to do? Walk?"
"Yes, if it's not far."
The boy grinned, and the members of the committee, who had been staring with all their might, grinned also. The young man's mention of the cable station seemed to have caused considerable excitement.
"Oh, it ain't too FAR!" said the stage-driver. Then he added: "Say, you're the new electrician, ain't you?"
The young man hesitated for a moment. Then he said, "Yes," and suggested, "I asked the way."
"Two blocks to the right; that's the main road, keep on that for four blocks, then turn to the left, and if you keep on straight ahead you'll get to the station."
"Blocks?" The stranger smiled. "I think you must be from New York."
"Do you?" inquired the youthful prodigy, climbing to the wagon seat.
"Don't forget to keep straight ahead after you turn off the main road.
Git dap! So long, fellers!" He leaned over the wheel, as the stage turned, and bestowed a wink upon the delighted "Squealer," who was holding one freckled paw over his mouth; then the "depot wagon" creaked away.
The square-shouldered young man looked after the equipage with an odd expression of countenance. Then he shrugged his shoulders, picked up the suitcase, and walked off the platform into the darkness.
Mr. Wixon removed the hand from his mouth and displayed a mammoth grin, that grew into a shriek of laughter in which every member of the committee joined.
"Haw! haw!" bellowed "Bluey," "so that's the feller that done Parker out of his job! Well, he may be mighty smart, but if that Joe Bartlett ain't smarter then I'm a skate, that's all! Smartest boy ever I see! 'If you keep on straight ahead you'll git to the station!' Gosh! he'll have to wear rubbers!"
"Maybe he's web-footed," suggested Smalley, and they laughed again.
A little later Captain Eri, with a dozen new, clean-smelling cranberry barrels in the wagon behind him, drove slowly down the "depot road." It was a clear night, but there was no moon, and Orham was almost at its darkest, which is very dark, indeed. The "depot road"--please bear in mind that there are no streets in Orham--was full of ruts, and although Daniel knew his way and did his best to follow it, the cranberry barrels rattled and shook in lively fashion. There are few homes near the station, and the dwellers in them conscientiously refrain from showing lights except in the ends of the buildings furthest from the front.
Strangers are inclined to wonder at this, but when they become better acquainted with the town and its people, they come to know that front gates and parlors are, by the majority of the inhabitants, restricted in their use to occasions such as a funeral, or, possibly, a wedding. For the average Orham family to sit in the parlor on a week evening would be an act bordering pretty closely on sacrilege.
It is from the hill by the Methodist church that the visitor to Orham gets his best view of the village. It is all about him, and for the most part below him. At night the lights in the houses show only here and there through the trees, but those on the beaches and at sea shine out plainly. The brilliant yellow gleam a mile away is from the Orham lighthouse on the bluff. The smaller white dot marks the light on Baker's Beach. The tiny red speck in the distance, that goes and comes again, is the flash-light at Setuckit Point, and the twinkle on the horizon to the south is the beacon of the lightship on Sand Hill Shoal.
It is on his arrival at this point, too, that the stranger first notices the sound of the surf. Being a newcomer, he notices this at once; after he has been in the village a few weeks, he ceases to notice it at all.
It is like the ticking of a clock, so incessant and regular, that one has to listen intently for a moment or two before his accustomed ear will single it out and make it definite. One low, steady, continuous roar, a little deeper in tone when the wind is easterly, the voice of the old dog Ocean gnawing with foaming mouth at the bone of the Cape and growling as he gnaws.
It may be that the young man with the square shoulders and the suit-case had paused at the turn of the road by the church to listen to this song of the sea; at any rate he was there, and when Captain Eri steered Daniel and the cranberry barrels around the corner and into the "main road," he stepped out and hailed.
"I beg your pardon," he said; "I'm afraid I'm mixed in my directions.
The stage-driver told me the way to the cable station, but I've forgotten whether he said to turn to the right when I reached here, or to the left."
Captain Eri took his lantern from the floor of the wagon and held it up.
He had seen the stranger when the latter left the train, but he had not heard the dialogue with Josiah Bartlett.
"How was you cal'latin' to go to the station?" he asked.
"Why, I intended to walk."
"Did you tell them fellers at the depot that you wanted to walk?"
"Certainly."
"Well, I swan! And they give you the direction?"
"Yes," a little impatiently; "why shouldn't they? So many blocks till I got to the main street, or road, and so many more, till I got somewhere else, and then straight on."
"Blocks, hey? That's Joe Bartlett. That boy ought to be mastheaded, and I've told Perez so more'n once. Well, Mister, I guess maybe you'd better not try to walk to the cable station to-night. You see, there's one thing they forgot to tell you. The station's on the outer beach, and there's a ha'f mile of pretty wet water between here and there."
The young man whistled. "You don't mean it!" he exclaimed.
"I sartin do, unless there's been an almighty drought since I left the house. I tell you what! If you'll jump in here with me, and don't mind waitin' till I leave these barrels at the house of the man that owns 'em, I'll drive you down to the shore and maybe find somebody to row you over. That is," with a chuckle, "if you ain't dead set on walkin'."
The stranger laughed heartily. "I'm not so stubborn as all that," he said. "It's mighty good of you, all the same."
"Don't say a word," said the Captain. "Give us your satchel. Now your flipper! There you are! Git dap, Dan'l!"
Daniel accepted the Captain's command in a tolerant spirit. He paddled along at a jog-trot for perhaps a hundred yards, and then, evidently feeling that he had done all that could be expected, settled back into a walk. The Captain turned towards his companion on the seat:
"I don't know as I mentioned it," he observed, "but my name is Hedge."
"Glad to meet you, Mr. Hedge," said the stranger. "My name is Hazeltine."
"I kind of jedged it might be when you said you wanted to git to the cable station. We heard you was expected."
"Did you? From Mr. Langley, I presume."
"No-o, not d'rectly. Of course, we knew Parker had been let go, and that somebody would have to take his place. I guess likely it was one of the operators that told it fust that you was the man, but anyhow it got as fur as M'lissy Busteed, and after that 'twas plain sailin'. You come from New York, don't you?"