-a-lunk_ of the speeding locomotive.

Hiram sat forward on the seat, eager, shrinking, exultant, always
straining while he shrank. He tried to plan, but could not. Night
closed in, and all that he saw now were the blinking lights that raced
astern. Off in the black sky to the southward a rosy light suffused
the night--San Francisco.

"Saus-a-lito! Everybody change! Don't forget yer baggage!"

Hiram was swept out with the crowd, swept through the chute to the
ferryboat, swept aboard. He followed the crowd forward and stood in
the bow. Black as ink the Bay of San Francisco stretched before him.
Like fireflies the lights of vessels scurried through the blackness.
Beyond the black water blinked the countless eyes of San Francisco,
above these the rosy glow which had beckoned since the fall of dusk.

The boat had started before Hiram was aware. Smoothly it slipped along
toward the beacons on the other shore. Hiram breathed the keen salt
breeze in gulps and looked steadily and curiously at the world that
waited for him. Somewhere there, perhaps, the girl of his dreams was
beckoning, and begging him not to be afraid. The boat nosed into her
slip and the crowd swept him ashore, swept him through the Ferry
Building, and, as it went its thousand ways, left him stranded, staring
unbelievingly up Market Street.

Ten minutes he stood there. Thousands pressed by him. The laughter
and grumblings of life buzzed in his uncomprehending ears. No one
noticed him. The continuous _clang-clang-clang_ of the street cars
grew to a rhythmic roar. Strange odors filled his nostrils. What held
him most was the lights--the myriad lights that blinked away in
perspective up Market Street, clusters of them, pillars of them, wheels
of them, stars and squares of them. They all blended into a shower of
diamonds and held him spellbound. Then the clang of the street cars,
the clatter of hoofs on cobbles, the crunch of wheels, the raucous
toots of automobile horns and the purring of the engines, the ceaseless
laughing and murmuring of the crowds, the unfamiliar odors all blended
with the lights, and Hiram Hooker was breathing life, and knew that it
was warm, knew that he loved it, and was unafraid!

At last he sighed and began warily crossing the street from the Ferry
Building to Market Street. He had read of country boys in the city.
He knew enough not to stand in the street and stare. He wisely kept
with a crowd while crossing, a