Part 47 (2/2)

”So we shook; and . . .”

Captain Bailey stopped short and sprang from his chair. ”There's my train comin',” he shouted. ”Good-by, Sol! So long, Barzilla! Keep away from fortune tellers and pretty servant girls or YOU'LL be gettin'

married pretty soon. Good-by.”

He darted out of the waiting room and his companions followed. Mr.

Wingate, having a few final calls to make, left the station soon afterwards and did not return until evening. And that evening he heard news which surprised him.

As he and Captain Sol were exchanging a last handshake on the platform, Barzilla said:

”Well, Sol, I've enjoyed loafin' around here and yarnin' with you, same as I always do. I'll be over again in a month or so and we'll have some more.”

The Captain shook his head. ”I may not be here then, Barzilla,” he observed.

”May not be here? What do you mean by that?”

”I mean that I don't know exactly where I shall be. I shan't be depot master, anyway.”

”Shan't be depot master? YOU won't? Why, what on airth--”

”I sent in my resignation four days ago. n.o.body knows it, except you, not even Issy, but the new depot master for East Harniss will be here to take my place on the mornin' of the twelfth, that's two days off.”

”Why! Why! SOL!”

”Yes. Keep mum about it. I'll--I'll let you know what I decide to do. I ain't settled it myself yet. Good-by, Barzilla.”

CHAPTER XVII

ISSY'S REVENGE

The following morning, at nine o'clock, Issy McKay sat upon the heap of rusty chain cable outside the blacksmith's shop at Denboro, reading, as usual, a love story. Issy was taking a ”day off.” He had begged permission of Captain Sol Berry, the permission had been granted, and Issy had come over to Denboro, the village eight miles above East Harniss, in his ”power dory,” or gasoline boat, the Lady May. The Lady May was a relic of the time before Issy was a.s.sistant depot master, when he gained a precarious living by quahauging, separating the reluctant bivalve from its muddy house on the bay bottom with an iron rake, the handle of which was forty feet long. Issy had been seized with a desire to try quahauging once more, hence his holiday. The rake was broken and he had put in at Denboro to have it fixed. While the blacksmith was busy, Issy laboriously spelled out the harrowing chapters of ”Vivian, the Shop Girl; or Lord Lyndhurst's Lowly Love.”

A grinning, freckled face peered cautiously around the corner of the blacksmith's front fence. Then an overripe potato whizzed through the air and burst against the shop wall a few inches from the reader's head.

Issy jumped.

”You--you everlastin' young ones, you!” he shouted fiercely. ”If I git my hands onto you, you'll wish you'd--I see you hidin' behind that fence.”

Two barefooted little figures danced provokingly in the roadway and two shrill voices chanted in derision:

”Is McKay--Is McKay-- Makes the Injuns run away!

”Scalped anybody lately, Issy?”

Alas for the indiscretions of youth! The tale of Issy's early expedition in search of scalps and glory was known from one end of Ostable County to the other. It had made him famous, in a way.

”If I git a-holt of you kids, I'll bet there'll be some scalpin' done,”

retorted the persecuted one, rising from the heap of cable.

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