In the Line

by Albertus T. Dudley

Laughlin appeared on Wolcott’s side. “Move down and let Ware in there, can’t you?” he called to the heads of the lines. “He’s been sick, you know, and ought to have as sheltered a place as he can get.”

“We’re all packed in here so tight we can’t move,” replied Marchmont.

“He can have my seat,” cried Wolcott.

“Don’t be a fool!” muttered Marchmont in his ear; but Wolcott paid no heed. The thought that the despised Laughlin should be lingering outside finding places for others, while his high-bred self had greedily scrambled for the best, shamed and angered him. He descended over the side and helped Laughlin boost the protesting Ware into the vacant seat. Then Wolcott and Laughlin crowded into the two last places, Jim tucked himself up on the box, and the barge moved off into the teeth of the wind.

For a time the occupants kept one another lively with songs and jokes. Then the two ends lapsed into silence, the middle gradually succumbed to the example of the ends, and soon the sound of a voice was scarcely to be heard in the barge except from Jenkyns and Wood, two chatterboxes whose lips were never silent. Old Jim evidently kept the whip steadily going, for the horses plunged recklessly down the short inclines, and the long, narrow barge slewed sometimes the width of the roadbed, like a double-runner on a steep bend.

“I hope these sled runners are strong,” said Laughlin to Mr. Leighton, who was beside him. “Jim seems to think they’re all right.”

“He’s taken several drops too much to-night, I am afraid,” returned Mr. Leighton. “But he knows the road and he knows the horses, and ought to get us home safely. I will never go on such an expedition again without a driver who can be trusted.”

The barge dipped suddenly over another crest; the leaders dashed blindly forward, out of the road at the curve and into it again with a sudden jerk, snapping the back sled like a whiplash far to the left, where the runner crashed violently against a rock. While the boys on the right were extricating themselves from the arms of those on the left, while the whole barge load was shouting and pushing and scrambling and demanding what had happened, Laughlin freed himself from the mêlée and ran to the horses’ heads. Jim, sobered by the calamity, soon had them in hand, and Laughlin, with the driver’s lantern, hastened back to the injured sled. The runner was broken completely off.

“I was afraid of that,” he said to Mr. Leighton, who stood in the midst of a knot of boys about the sleigh, examining the damage.

“I see where we get a long walk,” said Wood, to whom belonged one of the heads projecting over the edge of the barge. “It’s five miles in, if it’s an inch!”