nt miserere on a fiddle. His eyes were wide open and sightless.
A woman whose tattered skirt only partly concealed the man's trousers
and rubber boots which she wore, occasionally addressed him as "father."
She was piling about him a few articles of furniture which she was
lugging out of their home; that house was the upper part of a schooner's
cabin--something the sea had cast up on Hue and Cry. She was obliged to
bend nearly double in order to walk about in the shelter. Dogs slinked
between the feet of their masters, canine instinct informing them that
something evil was abroad that day. The children staring wide-eyed and
white-faced, the weeping women, the cowed men who shuffled and mumbled!
Among them strode the god of the machine, curt, contemptuous, puffing
his cigar! He came past Captain Mayo and his friends.

"I beg your pardon, sir," called the captain; "but are you sure that you
are doing this thing just right?"

"Let's see--if I remember, I had a little talk with you last night!"
suggested the agent, frostily. "Whom do you represent?" "Myself."

"Just how do you fit into this matter?" "I don't think I do fit--there
seem to be too many sharp corners," stated Mayo, not liking the other's
insolent manner. "Well, I fit! I have state authority." "So you have
told me. May I ask you a question?" "Go ahead, but be lively. This is
my busy day." "These people are being rooted up; they don't seem to know
what's to become of them. What will be done?"

"I told you last evening! Fools in an institution; able-bodied must go
to work. The state proposes--" "When you say 'state' just what do you
mean, sir?" "I mean that I have investigated this matter and I'm running
it."

"That's what I thought! The state usually doesn't know much about what
its agents are doing."

"You are not doubting my authority, are you?"

"No, but I'm doubting your good judgment."

"Look here, my man!"

"We'd better not lose our tempers," advised Mayo, calmly. "You are a
state servant, you say. Then a citizen has a right to talk to you. Let's
leave the state out of this, if you question my right. Man to man, now!
You're wrong."

The population of the island had drawn close circle about them.

"That's enough talk from you," declared the agent, wrathfully.

"You are trying to make over all at once what it has taken three
generations to bring about," insisted Mayo. "You can't do it!"

"You watch me and see if I can't! When I transact any bus