stom
nowadays. As he got off the train at the station he was surprised to
find Trina waiting for him.

"This is the first day it hasn't rained in weeks," she explained, "an' I
thought it would be nice to walk."

"Sure, sure," assented McTeague.

B Street station was nothing more than a little shed. There was no
ticket office, nothing but a couple of whittled and carven benches. It
was built close to the railroad tracks, just across which was the dirty,
muddy shore of San Francisco Bay. About a quarter of a mile back from
the station was the edge of the town of Oakland. Between the station
and the first houses of the town lay immense salt flats, here and there
broken by winding streams of black water. They were covered with a
growth of wiry grass, strangely discolored in places by enormous stains
of orange yellow.

Near the station a bit of fence painted with a cigar advertisement
reeled over into the mud, while under its lee lay an abandoned gravel
wagon with dished wheels. The station was connected with the town by
the extension of B Street, which struck across the flats geometrically
straight, a file of tall poles with intervening wires marching along
with it. At the station these were headed by an iron electric-light pole
that, with its supports and outriggers, looked for all the world like an
immense grasshopper on its hind legs.

Across the flats, at the fringe of the town, were the dump heaps, the
figures of a few Chinese rag-pickers moving over them. Far to the left
the view was shut off by the immense red-brown drum of the gas-works;
to the right it was bounded by the chimneys and workshops of an iron
foundry.

Across the railroad tracks, to seaward, one saw the long stretch of
black mud bank left bare by the tide, which was far out, nearly half a
mile. Clouds of sea-gulls were forever rising and settling upon this mud
bank; a wrecked and abandoned wharf crawled over it on tottering legs;
close in an old sailboat lay canted on her bilge.

But farther on, across the yellow waters of the bay, beyond Goat Island,
lay San Francisco, a blue line of hills, rugged with roofs and spires.
Far to the westward opened the Golden Gate, a bleak cutting in the
sand-hills, through which one caught a glimpse of the open Pacific.

The station at B Street was solitary; no trains passed at this hour;
except the distant rag-pickers, not a soul was in sight. The wind blew
strong, carrying with it the mingled smell of salt,