op there, Pat Scully had performed a
feat. With this opulence and splendor, these creeds, classes,
egotisms, that streamed through Romper on the rails day after day,
they had no color in common.

As if the displayed delights of such a blue hotel were not
sufficiently enticing, it was Scully's habit to go every morning and
evening to meet the leisurely trains that stopped at Romper and work
his seductions upon any man that he might see wavering, gripsack in
hand.

One morning, when a snow-crusted engine dragged its long string of
freight cars and its one passenger coach to the station, Scully
performed the marvel of catching three men. One was a shaky and
quick-eyed Swede, with a great shining cheap valise; one was a tall
bronzed cowboy, who was on his way to a ranch near the Dakota line;
one was a little silent man from the East, who didn't look it, and
didn't announce it. Scully practically made them prisoners. He was so
nimble and merry and kindly that each probably felt it would be the
height of brutality to try to escape. They trudged off over the
creaking board sidewalks in the wake of the eager little Irishman. He
wore a heavy fur cap squeezed tightly down on his head. It caused his
two red ears to stick out stiffly, as if they were made of tin.

At last, Scully, elaborately, with boisterous hospitality, conducted
them through the portals of the blue hotel. The room which they
entered was small. It seemed to be merely a proper temple for an
enormous stove, which, in the centre, was humming with godlike
violence. At various points on its surface the iron had become
luminous and glowed yellow from the heat. Beside the stove Scully's
son Johnnie was playing High-Five with an old farmer who had whiskers
both gray and sandy. They were quarrelling. Frequently the old farmer
turned his face towards a box of sawdust--colored brown from tobacco
juice--that was behind the stove, and spat with an air of great
impatience and irritation. With a loud flourish of words Scully
destroyed the game of cards, and bustled his son up-stairs with part
of the baggage of the new guests. He himself conducted them to three
basins of the coldest water in the world. The cowboy and the Easterner
burnished themselves fiery-red with this water, until it seemed to be
some kind of a metal polish. The Swede, however, merely dipped his
fingers gingerly and with trepidation. It was notable that throughout
this series of small ceremonies the three