it already
tenanted. Captain Sol had not yet arrived, but official authority was
represented by "Issy" McKay--his full name was Issachar Ulysses Grant
McKay--a long-legged, freckled-faced, tow-headed youth of twenty, who,
as usual, was sprawled along the settee by the wall, engrossed in
a paper covered dime novel. "Issy" was a lover of certain kinds of
literature and reveled in lurid fiction. As a youngster he had, at
the age of thirteen, after a course of reading in the "Deadwood Dick
Library," started on a pedestrian journey to the Far West, where,
being armed with home-made tomahawk and scalping knife, he contemplated
extermination of the noble red man. A wrathful pursuing parent had
collared the exterminator at the Bayport station, to the huge delight of
East Harniss, young and old. Since this adventure Issy had been famous,
in a way.

He was Captain Sol Berry's assistant at the depot. Why an assistant
was needed was a much discussed question. Why Captain Sol, a retired
seafaring man with money in the bank, should care to be depot master
at ten dollars a week was another. The Captain himself said he took the
place because he wanted to do something that was "half way between a
loaf and a job." He employed an assistant at his own expense because
he "might want to stretch the loafin' half." And he hired Issy
because--well, because "most folks in East Harniss are alike and you can
always tell about what they'll say or do. Now Issy's different. The Lord
only knows what HE'S likely to do, and that makes him interestin' as a
conundrum, to guess at. He kind of keeps my sense of responsibility from
gettin' mossy, Issy does."

"Issy," hailed Mr. Phinney, "has the Cap'n got here yet?"

Issy answered not. The villainous floorwalker had just proffered
matrimony or summary discharge to "Flora, the Beautiful Shop Girl," and
pending her answer, the McKay mind had no room for trifles.

"Issy!" shouted Simeon. "I say, Is', Wake up, you foolhead! Has Cap'n
Sol--"

"No, he ain't, Sim," volunteered Ed Crocker. He and his chum, Cornelius
Rowe, were seated in two of the waiting room chairs, their feet on two
others. "He ain't got here yet. We was just talkin' about him. You've
heard about Olive Edwards, I s'pose likely, ain't you?"

Phinney nodded gloomily.

"Yes," he said, "I've heard."

"Well, it's too bad," continued Crocker. "But, after all, it's Olive's
own fault. She'd ought to have married Sol Berry when she had the
chan