“I had an hour to wait for the train. I talked the matter over with the station-master.
“‘Yes,’ he said, ‘there’ll be trouble up there one of these days.’
“I said, ‘It seems to me to have begun.’
“He said, ‘It’s the Indian sun. It gets into their heads. We have one or two in the neighbourhood. They are quiet enough till something happens.’
“‘If I’d been two seconds longer,’ I said, ‘I believe he’d have done it.’
“‘It’s a taking house,’ said the station-master; ‘not too big and not too little. It’s the sort of house people seem to be looking for.’
“‘I don’t envy,’ I said, ‘the next person that finds it.’
“‘He settled himself down here,’ said the station-master, ‘about ten years ago. Since then, if one person has offered to take the house off his hands, I suppose a thousand have. At first he would laugh at them good-temperedly—explain to them that his idea was to live there himself, in peace and quietness, till he died. Two out of every three of them would express their willingness to wait for that, and suggest some arrangement by which they might enter into possession, say, a week after the funeral. The last few months it has been worse than ever. I reckon you’re about the eighth that has been up there this week, and to-day only Thursday. There’s something to be said, you know, for the old man.’”
“And did he,” asked Dick—“did he shoot the next party that came along?”
“Don’t be so silly, Dick,” said Robin; “it’s a story. Tell us another, Pa.”