"Horray!"
The station master turned away laughing.
"They look like a tough crowd, but they're O. K. in the end," he said to the man beside him who was looking after the vanishing car and its trailer. "There's yours coming down the switch. That'll take you up to Flamsted and the sheds." He pushed the loaded truck up the platform.
The stranger entered the car and took a seat at the rear; there were no other passengers. He told the conductor to leave him as near as possible to the sheds.
"Guess you don't know these parts?" The conductor put the question.
"This here is new to me," the man answered; he seemed nothing loath to enter into conversation. "When was this road built?"
"'Bout five years ago. You'll see what a roadway they've made clear along the north shore of the lake; it's bein' built up with houses just as fast as it's taken up."
He rang the starting bell. The car gathered headway and sped noisily along the frozen road-bed. In a few minutes it stopped at the Flamsted station; then it followed the shore of the lake for two miles until it reached the sheds. It stopped here and the man got out.
"Can you tell me where the manager's office is?" he asked a workman who was passing.
"Over there." He pointed with his thumb backwards across some railroad tracks and through a stone-yard to a small two-storey office building at the end of three huge sheds.