Then, seeing that the man hesitated, he shouted: 

“Go in there,” and nudged him in the direction of the door.

As the man turned, Hamilton settled himself down to run.  In a second he was at the landing.  The tender had just cast off her ropes and was moving out.

“Bridget,” he cried, and his voice rang high and clear above the dripping of the water from the cable, the creaking of the wheel as it swung round, and the churning of the screw.  “Bridget, Bridget Mahoney, Jim’s here!”

The captain came to the window of the pilot house and called back: 

“What’s that?”

“Bridget!” he shouted again.  “Bridget Mahoney’s Jim’s here!”

There was a pause, the captain not seeming to understand the situation, but a cheer went up from the deportation officials on board and from some of the tender’s crew who knew; and the cry ran along the decks: 

“Bridget, Bridget Mahoney!  Jim’s here!”

[Illustration:  WHERE THE WORKERS COME FROM.  Family of German immigrants, passing through Ellis Island on their way to the Middle West. (Courtesy of U.S.  Immigration Station, Ellis Island.)]

CHAPTER VI

THE NEGRO CENSUS FROM THE SADDLE

Leaving New York the next day after his visit to the Immigration Station on Ellis Island, Hamilton stayed only a few hours in Washington to receive final instructions before proceeding to the southwestern part of Kentucky where his work as a population census-taker was to begin.

At the appointed place he found the supervisor awaiting him.

“I suppose you know,” remarked his brother’s friend, shaking hands, “that I’ve given you a fairly well scattered district to cover.  You said you wanted to get a chance to see Kentucky as it really is, and this, together with your mountain experience, ought to give you variety enough.”

“They told me in Washington that it was largely a negro district?” the boy said questioningly.

“It is about as much of a black district as any in Kentucky,” was the reply, “but it isn’t solid black by any means.  Therein lies its interest.  The negroes are of all varieties, from old-time slaves who have never left the plantation on which they were piccaninnies during the war, to progressive negroes owning fair-sized tracts of land, most of them still living in the one-room shacks that you see all over the country, but a few having bought what used to be the ‘big house’ in antebellum days.”

“That’s just exactly what I was after,” Hamilton said with delight.  “How do I cover it, sir?  In the saddle?”

“You can drive, if you want to,” the supervisor replied, “and if it wasn’t for the agricultural schedules, I think it would be easier to do the work from a buggy.  But with the field work to consider, and in a district as scattered as yours is, the saddle might work out better.”