lease for Champney Googe at least three months before the end of his
term. Father Honore smiled to himself. He refolded it and laid it in the
drawer.

III

Early in the following March, on the arrival of the 3 P.M. train from
Hallsport, there was the usual crowd at The Corners' station to meet it.
They watched the passengers as they left the train and commented freely
on one and another known to them.

"I'll bet that's the new boss at the upper quarries," said one, pointing
to a short thickset man making his way up the platform.

"Yes, that's him; and they're taking on a gang of new men with him;
they're in the last car--there they come! There's going to be a regular
spring freshet of 'em coming along now--the business is booming."

They scanned the men closely as they passed, between twenty and thirty
of them of various nationalities. They were gesticulating wildly,
vociferating loudly, shouldering bundle, knapsack or tool-kit. Behind
them came a few stone-cutters, mostly Scotch and Irish. The last to
leave the train was evidently an American.

The crowd on the platform surged away to the electric car to watch
further proceedings of the newly arrived "gang." The arrival of the
immigrant workmen always afforded fun for the natives. The men shivered
and hunched their shoulders; the raw March wind was searching. The
gesticulating and vociferating increased. To any one unacquainted with
foreign ways, a complete rupture of international peace and relations
seemed imminent. They tumbled over one another into the cars and filled
them to overflowing, even to the platform where they clung to the
guards.

The man who had been the last to leave the train stood on the emptied
platform and looked about him. He carried a small bundle. He noted the
sign on the electric cars, "To Quarry End Park". A puzzled look came
into his face. He turned to the baggage-master who was wrestling with
the immigrants' baggage:--iron-bound chests, tin boxes and trunks, sacks
of heavy coarse linen filled with bedding.

"Does this car go to the sheds?"

The station master looked up. "It goes past there, but this is the
regular half-hour express for the quarries and the Park. You a stranger
in these parts?"

"This is all strange to me," the man answered.

"Any baggage?"

"No."

At that moment there was a rapid clanging of the gong; the motorman let
fly the whirling rod; the over full cars started with a jerk--there was
a howl, a shout,