The first train for Rivermouth left at noon.  After a late breakfast on board the Typhoon, our trunks were piled upon a baggage-wagon, and ourselves stowed away in a coach, which must have turned at least one hundred corners before it set us down at the railway station.

In less time than it takes to tell it, we were shooting across the country at a fearful rate—­now clattering over a bridge, now screaming through a tunnel; here we cut a flourishing village in two, like a knife, and here we dived into the shadow of a pine forest.  Sometimes we glided along the edge of the ocean, and could see the sails of ships twinkling like bits of silver against the horizon; sometimes we dashed across rocky pasture-lands where stupid-eyed cattle were loafing.  It was fun to scare lazy-looking cows that lay round in groups under the newly budded trees near the railroad track.

We did not pause at any of the little brown stations on the route (they looked just like overgrown black-walnut clocks), though at every one of them a man popped out as if he were worked by machinery, and waved a red flag, and appeared as though he would like to have us stop.  But we were an express train, and made no stoppages, excepting once or twice to give the engine a drink.  It is strange how the memory clings to some things.  It is over twenty years since I took that first ride to Rivermouth, and yet, oddly enough, I remember as if it were yesterday, that, as we passed slowly through the village of Hampton, we saw two boys fighting behind a red barn.  There was also a shaggy yellow dog, who looked as if he had commenced to unravel, barking himself all up into a knot with excitement.  We had only a hurried glimpse of the battle—­long enough, however, to see that the combatants were equally matched and very much in earnest.  I am ashamed to say how many times since I have speculated as to which boy got licked.  Maybe both the small rascals are dead now (not in consequence of the set-to, let us hope), or maybe they are married, and have pugnacious urchins of their own; yet to this day I sometimes find myself wondering how that fight turned out.

We had been riding perhaps two hours and a half, when we shot by a tall factory with a chimney resembling a church steeple; then the locomotive gave a scream, the engineer rang his bell, and we plunged into the twilight of a long wooden building, open at both ends.  Here we stopped, and the conductor, thrusting his head in at the car door, cried out, “Passengers for Rivermouth!”

At last we had reached our journey’s end.  On the platform my father shook hands with a straight, brisk old gentleman whose face was very serene and rosy.  He had on a white hat and a long swallow-tailed coat, the collar of which came clear up above his cars.  He didn’t look unlike a Pilgrim Father.  This, of course, was Grandfather Nutter, at whose house I was born.  My mother kissed him a great many times; and I was glad to see him myself, though I naturally did not feel very intimate with a person whom I had not seen since I was eighteen months old.