Bart told the station agent a very little about the history of the trunk. He left a dollar to pay for the broken hand car lock. He was in high spirits as he caught the east bound train. The whistles were blowing for a quarter of six as he reached Pleasantville and leaped from the engine, where a friendly engineer had given him a free ride, and in three minutes was at the door of the little express office.
Animated voices reached him from the inside. Bart peered beyond the threshold.
McCarthy, the night watchman, sat asleep in a chair in a corner. Darry Haven was at the desk, a spruce, solemn-faced young man beside him.
"I'm here, Darry," announced Bart.
Darry turned with a joyful face. It fell as he glanced beyond his young employer to the empty platform.
"No trunk!" he murmured in a low, disappointed tone.
"Too heavy to carry around, you see!" smiled Bart lightly. "Who is this gentleman? Oh, I see—good afternoon, Mr. Stuart."
"Afternoon," crisply answered the stranger.
He was a young limb of the law, employed since the previous year in the office of Judge Monroe, the principal attorney of Pleasantville.
Stuart was a butt for even the well-meaning boys of the town. He was only nineteen, but he affected the dignity of a sage of sixty, seeming to have the idea that nothing but a severe and forbidding manner could represent the high and lofty calling he had condescended to follow.