“I reckon she’s a-goin’ to be pretty late agin to-night, Jim,” he remarked in a squeaky falsetto.  “S’pose it’s the snow?”

“I don’t know,” responded the other man with a shade of annoyance, speaking from out an astonishing cataract of red beard that grew fiercely and thickly in all directions.

The spare man shifted the quill toothpick he was chewing to the other side of his mouth.  “It ain’t likely that anybody from the East will come with the corpse, I s’pose,” he went on reflectively.

“I don’t know,” responded the other, more curtly than before.

“It’s too bad he didn’t belong to some lodge or other.  I like an order funeral myself.  They seem more appropriate for people of some repytation,” the spare man continued, with an ingratiating concession in his shrill voice, as he carefully placed his toothpick in his vest pocket.  He always carried the flag at the G.A.R. funerals in the town.

The heavy man turned on his heel, without replying, and walked up the siding.  The spare man rejoined the uneasy group.  “Jim’s ez full ez a tick, ez ushel,” he commented commiseratingly.

Just then a distant whistle sounded, and there was a shuffling of feet on the platform.  A number of lanky boys, of all ages, appeared as, suddenly and slimily as eels wakened by the crack of thunder; some came from the waiting-room, where they had been warming themselves by the red stove, or half asleep on the slat benches; others uncoiled themselves from baggage trucks or slid out of express wagons.  Two clambered down from the driver’s seat of a hearse that stood backed up against the siding.  They straightened their stooping shoulders and lifted their heads, and a flash of momentary animation kindled their dull eyes at that cold, vibrant scream, the worldwide call for men.  It stirred them like the note of a trumpet; just as it had often stirred the man who was coming home tonight, in his boyhood.

The night express shot, red as a rocket, from out the eastward marsh lands and wound along the river shore under the long lines of shivering poplars that sentinelled the meadows, the escaping steam hanging in grey masses against the pale sky and blotting out the Milky Way.  In a moment the red glare from the headlight streamed up the snow-covered track before the siding and glittered on the wet, black rails.  The burly man with the dishevelled red beard walked swiftly up the platform toward the approaching train, uncovering his head as he went.  The group of men behind him hesitated, glanced questioningly at one another, and awkwardly followed his example.  The train stopped, and the crowd shuffled up to the express car just as the door was thrown open, the man in the G.A.R. suit thrusting his head forward with curiosity.  The express messenger appeared in the doorway, accompanied by a young man in a long ulster and travelling cap.

“Are Mr. Merrick’s friends here?” inquired the young man.