The Project Gutenberg EBook of Cap'n Warren's Wards, by Joseph C. Lincoln

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Title: Cap'n Warren's Wards

Author: Joseph C. Lincoln

Release Date: June 11, 2009 [EBook #3280]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CAP'N WARREN'S WARDS ***

Produced by Donald Lainson and D. A. Alexander

CAP'N WARREN'S WARDS

By Joseph C. Lincoln

Author of "The Depot Master," "The Woman Haters,"
"The Postmaster," "Cap'n Erie,"
"Mr. Pratt," etc.

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS
BY EDMUND FREDERICK

A. L. BURT COMPANY
PUBLISHERS NEW YORK

COPYRIGHT 1911, BY
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY

_Published October, 1911_

Printed in the United States of America

[Illustration: "Captain Warren had risen from his chair and was facing
her." [Page 48]]

CAP'N WARREN'S WARDS

CHAPTER I

"Ostable!" screamed the brakeman, opening the car door and yelling his
loudest, so as to be heard above the rattle of the train and the shriek
of the wind; "Ostable!"

The brakeman's cap was soaked through, his hair was plastered down on
his forehead, and, in the yellow light from the car lamps, his wet nose
glistened as if varnished. Over his shoulders the shiny ropes of rain
whipped and lashed across the space between the cars. The windows
streamed as each succeeding gust flung its miniature freshet against
them.

The passengers in the car--there were but four of them--did not seem
greatly interested in the brakeman's announcement. The red-faced person
in the seat nearest the rear slept soundly, as he had done for the
last hour and a half. He had boarded the train at Brockton, and, after
requesting the conductor not to "lemme me git by Bayport, Bill," at
first favored his fellow travelers with a song and then sank into
slumber.

The two elderly men sitting together on the right-hand side of the car
droned on in their apparently endless Jeremiad concerning the low price
of cranberries, the scarcity of scallops on the flats, the reasons why
the fish weirs were a failure nowadays, and similar cheerful topics. And
in his seat on the left, Mr. Atwood Graves, junior partner in the New
York firm of Sylveste