had with one oar at the stern just
turned her drifting form into the glassy calm by the railway-station,
tossed her anchor ashore, and was still busy with small matters of
boat-keeping, while his five passengers clambered to the platform.

The place showed somewhat more movement now. The negro had long ago
wound his line upon its crooked pole, gathered up his stiffened fishes
from the bank, thrust them into the pockets of his shamelessly ragged
trousers, and was gone to his hut in the underbrush. But the few
amphibious households round about were passing out and in at the
half-idle tasks of their slow daily life, and a young white man was
bustling around, now into the station and now out again upon the
platform, with authority in his frown and a pencil and two matches
behind his ear. It was Monday. Two or three shabby negroes with broad,
collapsed, glazed leather travelling-bags of the old carpet-sack
pattern dragged their formless feet about, waiting to take the train
for the next station to hire out there as rice harvesters, and one,
with his back turned, leaned motionless against an open window gazing
in upon the ticking telegraph instruments. A black woman in blue
cotton gown, red-and-yellow Madras turban, and some sportsman's
cast-off hunting-shoes minus the shoe-strings, crouched against the
wall. Beside her stood her shapely mulatto daughter, with
head-covering of white cotton cloth, in which female instinct had
discovered the lines of grace and disposed them after the folds of the
Egyptian fellah head--dress. A portly white man, with decided polish
in his commanding air, evidently a sugar-planter from the Mississippi
"coast" ten miles northward, moved about in spurred boots, and put
personal questions to the negroes, calling them "boys," and the
mulattress, "girl."

The pot-hunter was still among them; or rather, he had drawn apart
from the rest, and stood at the platform's far end, leaning on his
gun, an innocent, wild-animal look in his restless eyes, and a
slumberous agility revealed in his strong, supple loins. The
station-agent went to him, and with abrupt questions and assertions,
to which the man replied in low, grave monosyllables, bought his
game,--as he might have done two hours before, but--an Acadian can
wait. There was some trouble to make exact change, and the agent,
saying "Hold on, I'll fix it," went into the station just as the group
from the Sicilian's boat reached the platform. The agent ca