CHAPTER XVII.
AT THE FARM-HOUSE AGAIN
McKnight is always a sympathizer with the early worm. It was late when he appeared. Perhaps, like myself, he had not slept well. But he was apparently cheerful enough, and he made a better breakfast than I did. It was one o’clock before we got to Baltimore. After a half hour’s wait we took a local for M——, the station near which the cinematograph picture had been taken.
We passed the scene of the wreck, McKnight with curiosity, I with a sickening sense of horror. Back in the fields was the little farm-house where Alison West and I had intended getting coffee, and winding away from the track, maple trees shading it on each side, was the lane where we had stopped to rest, and where I had—it seemed presumption beyond belief now—where I had tried to comfort her by patting her hand.
We got out at M——, a small place with two or three houses and a general store. The station was a one-roomed affair, with a railed-off place at the end, where a scale, a telegraph instrument and a chair constituted the entire furnishing.
The station agent was a young man with a shrewd face. He stopped hammering a piece of wood over a hole in the floor to ask where we wanted to go.
“We’re not going,” said McKnight, “we’re coming. Have a cigar?”
The agent took it with an inquiring glance, first at it and then at us.
“We want to ask you a few questions,” began McKnight, perching himself on the railing and kicking the chair forward for me. “Or, rather, this gentleman does.”
“Wait a minute,” said the agent, glancing through the window. “There’s a hen in that crate choking herself to death.”
He was back in a minute, and took up his position near a sawdust-filled box that did duty as a cuspidor.