“How are ye?” he said, nodding to Walter in a friendly way. “Goin’?”
“That’s what I am here for.”
A footstep in the entry was now heard. A man entered, wearing a stout, heavy black coat, and black trousers, and he carried a lantern in his hand. It was the patrol from the easterly end of the beach.
“Cold!” was his one word of greeting, as he set his lantern on the table. He also deposited there a leather pouch attached to a long leather strap.
Another step was heard in the entry, and a man appeared who wore a thick blue blouse and blue trousers, and had a very much padded look. He was the patrol from the westerly end of the beach. He expressed his opinion that it was cold by silently going to the stove; and there he stood rubbing his hands in the warm atmosphere. He had already deposited a leather pouch on the table. Tom Walker and the other arrival from upstairs, were dressing for their duty as patrolmen in the place of the two whose chilling wintry beat had just been accomplished. Tom put on a Guernsey jacket, and then drew over it a short, thick sack coat. He pulled a cap of shaggy cloth down over his hair, drew close the ear–laps, and then took up a pair of thick, warm mittens lying under the stove.
“Here,” said the keeper to Walter. “Before you start, let me show you what the men take with them.”
As he spoke, he lifted a leather pouch that had been deposited on the table. It was a circular case of leather, about four inches in diameter, containing a “time–detector”; its works resembling those of a chronometer. Taking out a key and opening the detector, the keeper said, “I thought you might like to see this. There, I have put this round card in the detector. You see it is marked off into hours, and ten minutes, and five minutes, and is called the dial. The patrol takes it with him, and at the end of his beat he puts a key in that hole you see, and gives the key a turn. A kind of punch, stamped like a die, is forced down on the dial. In the morning, I open the detector, and there is the dial that tells if he has done his duty. These dials I forward once a week to Washington.”
“Supposing the man don’t want to go his beat, and turns the key somewhere this side of the end of the route?” asked Walter.
“Ah,” said the keeper, “the feller can’t play ’possum that way. He must go to the end of his beat to get his key. It is at a house there. He must go that far, you see, anyway.”