The Portygee | Page 4

once and a wonder--had just deposited upon
that platform. He would not have discounted the statement one iota.
The South Harniss station platform WAS the most miserable spot on
earth and he was the most miserable human being upon it. And this last
was probably true, for there were but three other humans upon that
platform and, judging by externals, they seemed happy enough. One
was the station agent, who was just entering the building preparatory to
locking up for the night, and the others were Jim Young, driver of the
"depot wagon," and Doctor Holliday, the South Harniss "homeopath,"
who had been up to a Boston hospital with a patient and was returning
home. Jim was whistling "Silver Bells," a tune much in vogue the
previous summer, and Doctor Holliday was puffing at a cigar and
knocking his feet together to keep them warm while waiting to get into
the depot wagon. These were the only people in sight and they were
paying no attention whatever to the lonely figure at the other end of the
platform.
The boy looked about him. The station, with its sickly yellow gleam of
kerosene lamp behind its dingy windowpane, was apparently the only
inhabited spot in a barren wilderness. At the edge of the platform
civilization seemed to end and beyond was nothing but a black earth
and a black sky, tossing trees and howling wind, and cold--raw, damp,
penetrating cold. Compared with this even the stuffy plush seats and

smelly warmth of the car he had just left appeared temptingly homelike
and luxurious. All the way down from the city he had sneered inwardly
at a one-horse railroad which ran no Pullmans on its Cape branch in
winter time. Now he forgot his longing for mahogany veneer and
individual chairs and would gladly have boarded a freight car, provided
there were in it a lamp and a stove.
The light in the station was extinguished and the agent came out with a
jingling bunch of keys and locked the door. "Good-night, Jim," he
shouted, and walked off into the blackness. Jim responded with a
"good-night" of his own and climbed aboard the wagon, into the dark
interior of which the doctor had preceded him. The boy at the other end
of the platform began to be really alarmed. It looked as if all living
things were abandoning him and he was to be left marooned, to starve
or freeze, provided he was not blown away first.
He picked up the suitcase--an expensive suitcase it was, elaborately
strapped and buckled, with a telescope back and gold fittings--and
hastened toward the wagon. Mr. Young had just picked up the reins.
"Oh,--oh, I say!" faltered the boy. We have called him "the boy" all this
time, but he did not consider himself a boy, he esteemed himself a man,
if not full-grown physically, certainly so mentally. A man, with all a
man's wisdom, and more besides--the great, the all-embracing wisdom
of his age, or youth.
"Here, I say! Just a minute!" he repeated. Jim Young put his head
around the edge of the wagon curtain. "Eh?" he queried. "Eh? Who's
talkin'? Oh, was it you, young feller? Did you want me?"
The young fellow replied that he did. "This is South Harniss, isn't it?"
he asked.
Mr. Young chuckled. "Darn sure thing," he drawled. "I give in that it
looks consider'ble like Boston, or Providence, R. I., or some of them
capitols, but it ain't, it's South Harniss, Cape Cod."
Doctor Holliday, on the back seat of the depot wagon, chuckled. Jim

did not; he never laughed at his own jokes. And his questioner did not
chuckle, either.
"Does a--does a Mr. Snow live here?" he asked.
The answer was prompt, if rather indefinite. "Um-hm," said the driver.
"No less'n fourteen of him lives here. Which one do you want?"
"A Mr. Z. Snow."
"Mr. Z. Snow, eh? Humph! I don't seem to recollect any Mr. Z. Snow
around nowadays. There used to be a Ziba Snow, but he's dead. 'Twan't
him you wanted, was it?"
"No. The one I want is--is a Captain Snow. Captain--" he paused before
uttering the name which to his critical metropolitan ear had seemed so
dreadfully countrified and humiliating; "Captain Zelotes Snow," he
blurted, desperately.
Jim Young laughed aloud. "Good land, Doc!" he cried, turning toward
his passenger; "I swan I clean forgot that Cap'n Lote's name begun with
a Z. Cap'n Lote Snow? Why, darn sure! I . . . Eh?" He stopped short,
evidently struck by a new idea. "Sho!" he drawled, slowly. "Why, I
declare I believe you're . . . Yes, of course! I heard they was expectin'
you. Doc, you know who 'tis, don't you? Cap'n Lote's grandson; Janie's
boy."
He took the lighted lantern