The train left the platform—­and left quite as uninviting a perspective on the other side of the track as had previously greeted Madison’s restricted view.  But now the man who had salvaged his baggage came down the platform toward him.  Madison inspected the approaching figure with interest.  The man ambled along without haste, his jaws wagging industriously upon his tobacco, his iron-gray chin whiskers, from the wagging, flapping like a burgee in a breeze.  He wore a round fur cap, quite bare of fur at the edges where the pelt showed shiny, and a red woollen tippet was tied round his neck and knotted at the back with the ends dangling down over his coat.  The coat itself, a long one of some fuzzy material, with huge side pockets into which the man’s hands were plunged, reached to the cavernous tops of jackboots where the nether ends of his trousers were stowed away.

The man halted before Madison, and, reaching a mittened hand under his chin, reflectively lifted his whiskers to an acute angle, while his blue eyes over the rims of steel-bowed spectacles wandered from Madison to Madison’s dress-suit case and back to Madison again.

“Be you goin’ to git off here?” he inquired.

Madison smiled at him engagingly.

“Well,” he said, “I wouldn’t care to have it known, but if you can keep a secret—­”

“Hee-hee!” tittered the other.  “Now that’s right smart, that be.  Waren’t expectin’ nobody to meet you, was you?  I ain’t heerd of none of the folks lookin’ for visitors.”

“No,” said Madison.  “But there’s a hotel in the town, isn’t there?”

“Two of ’em,” said the other.  “The Waalderf an’ the Congress, but the Waalderf ain’t done a sight of business since we got pro’bition in the State an’ has kinder got run down.  I reckon the Congress’ll suit you best if you ain’t against payin’ a mite more, which I reckon you ain’t for I see you come down in the parler car.”

“And what,” asked Madison, “does the Congress charge?”

“Well,” said the other, “ordinary, it’s a dollar a day or five dollars a week, but this bein’ off season an’ nobody there, ’twouldn’t surprise me if Walt’ud kind of shade the price for you—­Waalderf’s three an’ a half a week.  Them your duds up the platform?  I’ll drive you over for forty cents.  What was it you said your name was?”

“Forty cents is a most disinterested offer, and I accept it heartily,” said Madison affably.  “And my name’s Madison—­John Garfield Madison, from New York.”

“Mine’s Higgins,” volunteered the other.  “Hiram Higgins, an’ I’m postmaster an’ town constable of Needley.  An’ now, Mr. Madison, I reckon we’ll just get these effects of your’n onto the wagon an’ move along—­folks’ll be gettin’ kinder rambunctious for their mail.”

Hiram Higgins backed the democrat around, roped the baggage onto the tail-board, picked up the hungry-looking mail-bag from where the mail clerk had slung it from the car to the platform, threw it down in front of the dashboard, and got in after it.  Madison clambered into the back seat, and they bumped off along the road.