Part 86

They scanned the men closely as they passed, between twenty and thirty of them of various nationalities. They were gesticulating wildly, vociferating loudly, shouldering bundle, knapsack or tool-kit. Behind them came a few stone-cutters, mostly Scotch and Irish. The last to leave the train was evidently an American.

The crowd on the platform surged away to the electric car to watch further proceedings of the newly arrived "gang." The arrival of the immigrant workmen always afforded fun for the natives. The men shivered and hunched their shoulders; the raw March wind was searching. The gesticulating and vociferating increased. To any one unacquainted with foreign ways, a complete rupture of international peace and relations seemed imminent. They tumbled over one another into the cars and filled them to overflowing, even to the platform where they clung to the guards.

The man who had been the last to leave the train stood on the emptied platform and looked about him. He carried a small bundle. He noted the sign on the electric cars, "To Quarry End Park". A puzzled look came into his face. He turned to the baggage-master who was wrestling with the immigrants' baggage:--iron-bound chests, tin boxes and trunks, sacks of heavy coarse linen filled with bedding.

"Does this car go to the sheds?"

The station master looked up. "It goes past there, but this is the regular half-hour express for the quarries and the Park. You a stranger in these parts?"

"This is all strange to me," the man answered.

"Any baggage?"

"No."

At that moment there was a rapid clanging of the gong; the motorman let fly the whirling rod; the over full cars started with a jerk--there was a howl, a shout, followed by a struggle to keep the equilibrium; an undersized Canuck was seen to be running madly alongside with one hand on the guard and endeavoring to get a foothold; he was hauled up unceremoniously by a dozen hands. The crowd watching them, cheered and jeered:

"Goin' it some, Antoine! Don't get left!"

"Keep on your pins, you Dagos!"

"Steady, Polacks--there's the strap!"

"Gee up, Johnny!" This to the motorman.

"Gosh, it's like a soda bottle fizzin' to hear them Rooshians talkin'."

"Hooray for you!"

The cars were off swiftly now; the men on the platforms waved their hats, their white teeth flashing, their gold earrings twinkling, and echoed the American cheer:--

"Horray!"

The station master turned away laughing.

"They look like a tough crowd, but they're O. K. in the end," he said to the man beside him who was looking after the vanishing car and its trailer. "There's yours coming down the switch. That'll take you up to Flamsted and the sheds." He pushed the loaded truck up the platform.

The stranger entered the car and took a seat at the rear; there were no other passengers. He told the conductor to leave him as near as possible to the sheds.

"Guess you don't know these parts?" The conductor put the question.

"This here is new to me," the man answered; he seemed nothing loath to enter into conversation. "When was this road built?"

"'Bout five years ago. You'll see what a roadway they've made clear along the north shore of the lake; it's bein' built up with houses just as fast as it's taken up."

He rang the starting bell. The car gathered headway and sped noisily along the frozen road-bed. In a few minutes it stopped at the Flamsted station; then it followed the shore of the lake for two miles until it reached the sheds. It stopped here and the man got out.

"Can you tell me where the manager's office is?" he asked a workman who was passing.

"Over there." He pointed with his thumb backwards across some railroad tracks and through a stone-yard to a small two-storey office building at the end of three huge sheds.

The man made his way across to them. Once he stopped to look at the leaden waters of the lake, rimmed with ice; and up at the leaden sky that seemed to be shutting down close upon them like a lid; and around at the gray waste of frozen ground, the meadows covered lightly with snow and pools of surface ice that here and there showed the long bleached grass pricking through in grayish-yellow tufts. Beyond the meadows he saw a rude stone chapel, and near by the foundations, capped with wood, of a large church. He shivered once; he had no overcoat. Then he went on to the manager's office. He rang and opened the door.

"Can I see the manager?"