Part 52

the name of dwelling; from this their communicative caller of the preceding evening was removing his scant belongings. His wife and children were helping. He set down a battered table when he met Mayo and his party.

“I'm the only citizen who can get away early and--as you might call it--respectable, gents. I took my hundred and fifty and bought that house-bo't out there.” It was an ancient scow, housed over, and evidently had grown venerable in service as a floating fish-market. “They can't drive me off'n the Atlantic Ocean! The others 'ain't woke up to a reelizing sense that they have got to go and that this all means business! I'm getting away early or else they'd all be trying to climb aboard my bo't like the folks wanted to do to Noah's ark when they see that the flood wasn't just a shower.” He lifted his table upon his head and marched on, leading his flock.

All the population of the island was out of doors. The women and the children were idling in groups; the men were listlessly following the commissioner on his rounds. No spirit of rebelliousness was evident. The men acted more like inquisitive sheep. They were of that abject variety of poor whites who accept the rains from heaven and bow to the reign of authority with the same unquestioning resignation.

But Mayo discovered promptly an especial reason for the calmness exhibited by these men. Their slow minds had not wakened to full comprehension.

“What do you men propose to do?” demanded Captain Mayo of a group which had abandoned the commissioner and had strolled over to inspect the new-comers.

“There ain't nothing we can do,” stated a spokesman.

“But don't you understand that this man is here with full power from the state to put you off this island?”

“Oh, they have threated us before. But something has allus come up. We haven't been driv' off.”

“But this time it's going to happen! Why don't you wake up? Where are you going?”

“That's for somebody else to worry about. This ain't any of our picking and choosing.”

“What's the use of trying to beat anything sensible through the shells of them quahaugs?” snarled Captain Candage, with 'longcoast scorn for the inefficient.

“Not much use, I'm afraid,” acknowledged the young man. “But look at the children!”

Those pathetic waifs of Hue and Cry were huddled apart, dumb with terror which their elders made no attempt to calm. They were ragged, pitiful, wistful urchins; lads with pinched faces, poor little snippets of girls. Their childish imaginations made of the affair a tragedy which they could not understand. Under their arms they held frightened cats, helpless kittens, or rag dolls. The callous calm of the men mystified them; the weeping of their mothers made their miserable fear more acute. They stared from face to face, trying to comprehend.

“What can I say to them?” asked Polly Candage, in a whisper. “It's wicked. They are so frightened.”

“Perhaps something can be done with that agent. I'm trying to think up something to say to him,” Mayo told her.

An old man, a very old man, sat on an upturned clamhod and yawled a discordant miserere on a fiddle. His eyes were wide open and sightless. A woman whose tattered skirt only partly concealed the man's trousers and rubber boots which she wore, occasionally addressed him as “father.” She was piling about him a few articles of furniture which she was lugging out of their home; that house was the upper part of a schooner's cabin--something the sea had cast up on Hue and Cry. She was obliged to bend nearly double in order to walk about in the shelter. Dogs slinked between the feet of their masters, canine instinct informing them that something evil was abroad that day. The children staring wide-eyed and white-faced, the weeping women, the cowed men who shuffled and mumbled! Among them strode the god of the machine, curt, contemptuous, puffing his cigar! He came past Captain Mayo and his friends.

“I beg your pardon, sir,” called the captain; “but are you sure that you are doing this thing just right?”

“Let's see--if I remember, I had a little talk with you last night!” suggested the agent, frostily. “Whom do you represent?” “Myself.”

“Just how do you fit into this matter?” “I don't think I do fit--there seem to be too many sharp corners,” stated Mayo, not liking the other's insolent manner. “Well, I fit! I have state authority.” “So you have told me. May I ask you a question?” “Go ahead, but be lively. This is my busy day.” “These people are being rooted up; they don't seem to know what's to become of them. What will be done?”

“I told you last evening! Fools in an institution; able-bodied must go to work. The state proposes--” “When you say 'state' just what do you mean, sir?” “I mean that I have investigated this matter and I'm running it.”

“That's what I thought! The state usually doesn't know much about what its agents are doing.”

“You are not doubting my authority, are you?”

“No, but I'm doubting your good judgment.”

“Look here, my man!”

“We'd better not lose our tempers,” advised Mayo, calmly. “You are a state servant, you say. Then a citizen has a right to talk to you. Let's leave the state out of this, if you question my right. Man to man, now! You're wrong.”

The population of the island had drawn close circle about them.

“That's enough talk from you,” declared the agent, wrathfully.

“You are trying to make over all at once what it has taken three generations to bring about,” insisted Mayo. “You can't do it!”