g aimlessness, at the telegraph office.

There, besides the man who sat at the key, he discovered three others,
all of unfamiliar mien, but he gathered from the scowls which they bent
on him that he was something less than welcome. Palpably the present
occupants of that small room preferred to remain uninterrupted in the
discussion of such matters as might arise, yet they did not wish to
manifest open or undue anxiety to a stranger.

"Howdy, men," began the new arrival affably as he stood towering over
the telegraph operator. Then looking down at that person he added with
awkward, back-country diffidence: "Stranger, be ye ther feller thet
works thet thar telegraph?"

The seated man looked up and nodded.

"I promised a man by ther name of Brent back thar in Coal City ter
kinderly see ef anybody along ther road I come hed any timber they
sought ter sell." The giant still spoke with a hulking shyness. "I
hain't l'arned nothin', because I come through soon in ther mornin' an'
ther roads was empty, but I reckon I'd better send him a message ter
thet effect."

Halloway noticed that, as he talked, the other men watched him narrowly
though, as he glanced in their direction, they fell at once into a
semblance of carelessness. The operator grunted, as he shoved forward
a blank with the instructions, "write out your telegram."

Halloway modestly thrust back the paper.

"I kin write--some----" he said, "but not skeercely good enough fer
thet. I 'lowed I'd get ye ter do hit fer me. Just say I haven't
heered of no timber fer sale. His name's Will Brent an' mine's Jack
Halloway."

As the seated man grudgingly scribbled, the newcomer lounged lazily
nearby, but just as the man at the key was about to begin sending, his
instrument fell into a frenzied activity. Halloway thought that the
other loiterers, who were really no more genuinely loitering than
himself, made a poor showing of indifference, and that their attitudes
betrayed their eagerness of waiting for whatever was coming over.

Finally the electric chatter ended. The seated man had cut in once or
twice with questions, and at the end he rose from his chair, not with a
regularly transcribed message, but with a few hastily jotted notes on a
sheet of paper in his hand.

Impulse had brought him to his feet but he stood hesitant, bethinking
himself of the presence of the interloper, and Halloway broke in with a
drawling inquiry pitched to a stupid inflection.