g and splashing, and going away
again. The small inside steamers, which came down from the last city in
the line of sea-cities south of New York by an anomalous route
advertised as "strictly inland all the way," also touched there, as if
to take a free breath before plunging again into the narrow, grassy
channels, and turning curves by the process of climbing the bank with
the bow and letting the stern swing round, while men with poles pushed
off again. It was the channel of this inside route which the
railroad-drawbridge crossed in the midst of a broad, sea-green prairie
below the town. As there was but one locomotive, and, when it had gone
down the road in the morning, nothing could cross again until it came
back at night, one would suppose that the keeper might have left the
bridge turned for the steamers all day. But no: the superintendent was a
man of spirit, and conducted his railroad on the principle of what it
should be rather than what it was. He had a hand-car of his own, and
came rolling along the track at all hours, sitting with dignity in an
arm-chair while two red-shirted negroes worked at the crank. There were
several drawbridges on his route, and it was his pleasure that they
should all be exactly in place, save when a steamer was actually passing
through; he would not even allow the keepers to turn the bridges a
moment before it was necessary, and timed himself sometimes so as to
pass over on his hand-car when the bow of the incoming boat was not ten
yards distant.

But, even with its steamers, its railroad, and railroad superintendent
of the spirit above described, Port Wilbarger was but a sleepy,
half-alive little town. Over toward the sea it had a lighthouse and a
broad, hard, silver-white beach, which would have made the fortune of a
Northern village; but when a Northern visitor once exclaimed,
enthusiastically, "Why, I understand that you can walk for twenty miles
down that beach!" a Wilbarger citizen looked at him slowly, and
answered, "Yes, you can--if you _want_ to." There was, in fact, a kind
of cold, creeping east wind, which did not rise high enough to stir the
tops of the trees to and fro, but which, nevertheless, counted for a
good deal over on that beach.

Mrs. Manning was poor; but everybody was poor at Wilbarger, and nobody
minded it much. Marion was the housekeeper and house-provider, and
everything went on like clock-work. Marion was like her father, it was
said; but nobody remembere