icked up the
suitcase, and walked off the platform into the darkness.

Mr. Wixon removed the hand from his mouth and displayed a mammoth
grin, that grew into a shriek of laughter in which every member of the
committee joined.

"Haw! haw!" bellowed "Bluey," "so that's the feller that done Parker out
of his job! Well, he may be mighty smart, but if that Joe Bartlett ain't
smarter then I'm a skate, that's all! Smartest boy ever I see! 'If you
keep on straight ahead you'll git to the station!' Gosh! he'll have to
wear rubbers!"

"Maybe he's web-footed," suggested Smalley, and they laughed again.

A little later Captain Eri, with a dozen new, clean-smelling cranberry
barrels in the wagon behind him, drove slowly down the "depot road." It
was a clear night, but there was no moon, and Orham was almost at its
darkest, which is very dark, indeed. The "depot road"--please bear in
mind that there are no streets in Orham--was full of ruts, and although
Daniel knew his way and did his best to follow it, the cranberry barrels
rattled and shook in lively fashion. There are few homes near the
station, and the dwellers in them conscientiously refrain from showing
lights except in the ends of the buildings furthest from the front.
Strangers are inclined to wonder at this, but when they become better
acquainted with the town and its people, they come to know that front
gates and parlors are, by the majority of the inhabitants, restricted in
their use to occasions such as a funeral, or, possibly, a wedding. For
the average Orham family to sit in the parlor on a week evening would be
an act bordering pretty closely on sacrilege.

It is from the hill by the Methodist church that the visitor to Orham
gets his best view of the village. It is all about him, and for the most
part below him. At night the lights in the houses show only here and
there through the trees, but those on the beaches and at sea shine
out plainly. The brilliant yellow gleam a mile away is from the Orham
lighthouse on the bluff. The smaller white dot marks the light on
Baker's Beach. The tiny red speck in the distance, that goes and comes
again, is the flash-light at Setuckit Point, and the twinkle on the
horizon to the south is the beacon of the lightship on Sand Hill Shoal.

It is on his arrival at this point, too, that the stranger first notices
the sound of the surf. Being a newcomer, he notices this at once; after
he has been in the village a few weeks, he cease