“No, he hasn’t.  I wrote him that day I told you to move me.”

“Hum! that’s kind of funny.  You don’t s’pose—­”

He stopped, noticing the expression on his friend’s face.  The depot master was looking out through the open door of the waiting room.  On the opposite side of the road, just emerging from Mr. Higgins’s “general store,” was Olive Edwards, the widow whose home was to be pulled down as soon as the “Colonial” reached its destination.  She came out of the store and started up Main Street.  Suddenly, and as if obeying an involuntary impulse, she turned her head.  Her eyes met those of Captain Sol Berry, the depot master.  For a brief instant their glance met, then Mrs. Edwards hurried on.

Sim Phinney sighed pityingly.  “Looks kind of tired and worried, don’t she?” he ventured.  His friend did not speak.

“I say,” repeated Phinney, “that Olive looks sort of worn out and—­”

“Has she heard from the Omaha cousin yet?” interrupted the depot master.

“No; Mr. Hilton says not.  Sol, what do you s’pose—­”

But Captain Sol had risen and gone into the ticket office.  The door closed behind him.  Mr. Phinney shook his head and walked out of the building.  On his way back to the scene of the house moving he shook his head several times.

On the afternoon of the ninth Captain Bailey Stitt and his friend Wingate came to say good-by.  Stitt was going back to Orham on the “up” train, due at 3:30.  Barzilla would return to Wellmouth and the Old Home House on the evening (the “down”) train.

“Hey, Sol!” shouted Wingate, as they entered the waiting room.  “Sol! where be you?”

The depot master came out of the ticket office.  “Hello, boys!” he said shortly.

“Hello, Sol!” hailed Stitt.  “Barzilla and me have come to shed the farewell tear.  As hirelin’s of soulless corporations, meanin’ the Old Home House at Wellmouth and the Ocean House at Orham, we’ve engaged all the shellfish along-shore and are goin’ to clear out.”

“Yes,” chimed in his fellow “hireling,” “and we thought the pleasantest place to put in our few remainin’ hours—­as the papers say when a feller’s goin’ to be hung—­was with you.”

“I thought so,” said Captain Bailey, with a wink.  “We’ve been havin’ more or less of an argument, Sol.  Remember how Barzilla made fun of Jonadab Wixon for believin’ in dreams?  Yes, well that was only make believe.  He believes in ’em himself.”

“I don’t either,” declared Wingate.  “And I never said so.  What I said was that sometimes it almost seemed as if there was somethin’ in fortune tellin’ and such.”

“There is,” chuckled Bailey with another wink at the depot master.  “There’s money in it—­for the fortune tellers.”

“I said—­and I say again,” protested Barzilla, “that I knew a case at our hotel of a servant girl named Effie, and she—­”

“Oh, Heavens to Betsy!  Here he goes again, I steered him in here on purpose, Sol, so’s he’d get off that subject.”