III
Early in the following March, on the arrival of the 3 P.M. train from Hallsport, there was the usual crowd at The Corners' station to meet it. They watched the passengers as they left the train and commented freely on one and another known to them.
"I'll bet that's the new boss at the upper quarries," said one, pointing to a short thickset man making his way up the platform.
"Yes, that's him; and they're taking on a gang of new men with him; they're in the last car—there they come! There's going to be a regular spring freshet of 'em coming along now—the business is booming."
They scanned the men closely as they passed, between twenty and thirty of them of various nationalities. They were gesticulating wildly, vociferating loudly, shouldering bundle, knapsack or tool-kit. Behind them came a few stone-cutters, mostly Scotch and Irish. The last to leave the train was evidently an American.
The crowd on the platform surged away to the electric car to watch further proceedings of the newly arrived "gang." The arrival of the immigrant workmen always afforded fun for the natives. The men shivered and hunched their shoulders; the raw March wind was searching. The gesticulating and vociferating increased. To any one unacquainted with foreign ways, a complete rupture of international peace and relations seemed imminent. They tumbled over one another into the cars and filled them to overflowing, even to the platform where they clung to the guards.
The man who had been the last to leave the train stood on the emptied platform and looked about him. He carried a small bundle. He noted the sign on the electric cars, "To Quarry End Park". A puzzled look came into his face. He turned to the baggage-master who was wrestling with the immigrants' baggage:—iron-bound chests, tin boxes and trunks, sacks of heavy coarse linen filled with bedding.
"Does this car go to the sheds?"
The station master looked up. "It goes past there, but this is the regular half-hour express for the quarries and the Park. You a stranger in these parts?"
"This is all strange to me," the man answered.