It Might Have Happened Otherwise

By Hugh Pendexter
Author of “The Chelsea Vase,” “The Crimson Track,” etc.
The growth of the thing in his mind had been gradual. When it had obtruded upon his consciousness at first he had drawn back in mingled fear and anger. By degrees, however, he tolerated the thought, only always at a distance, and concluded by allowing it to make a rendezvous of his idle meditations, receiving it much as one might welcome an unwholesome but highly fascinating acquaintance. All the time he knew its real name was Theft.
For three years Parsly had served as station agent and telegraph-operator at the Junction. Each day he had observed the transient bustling by the long platform, the spectacle never varying. Long vestibuled trains halted impatiently, and always the same curious or apathetic faces peered out at him from the Pullmans.
It was the branch line, tapping the lumber country, that contributed humanism, consisting of a nodding acquaintance with timber operators and forlorn commercial travelers. The first were always in a hurry to make the big city connection; the latter lingered in his company for the sake of gaining an audience while they cursed the country.
The last because the Junction was not the liveliest place in the world to put in an hour or two of waiting. Situated where the engineering problem had been the simplest, it was surrounded by blueberry plains, dotted at intervals with scrub pine. As the locomotives annually set the pines afire, the immediate foreground continuously presented a dead, charred appearance. Far-off, the objective point of the Pullmans, loomed the cool silhouettes of mountains, guardians of inland lakes and famous fishing.
More than once Parsly compared himself with Robinson Crusoe in his isolation; only he had no man Friday to enliven his dull routine. He saw much of the passing world but was never of it. Thus, at the end of three years, the hurrying by of the heavy trains aroused a species of resentment. Everyone was at liberty to take flight but him. Then again, fifty dollars a month for his combined duties was hardly a compensating solace.