THANKFUL'S INHERITANCE

By Joseph C. Lincoln




CHAPTER I


The road from Wellmouth Centre to East Wellmouth is not a good one; even
in dry weather and daylight it is not that. For the first two miles it
winds and twists its sandy way over bare hills, with cranberry
swamps and marshy ponds in the hollows between. Then it enters upon a
three-mile stretch bordered with scrubby pines and bayberry thickets,
climbing at last a final hill to emerge upon the bluff with the ocean
at its foot. And, fringing that bluff and clustering thickest in the
lowlands just beyond, is the village of East Wellmouth, which must on
no account be confused with South Wellmouth, or North Wellmouth, or West
Wellmouth, or even Wellmouth Port.

On a bright sunny summer day the East Wellmouth road is a hard one to
travel. At nine o'clock of an evening in March, with a howling gale
blowing and rain pouring in torrents, traveling it is an experience.
Winnie S., who drives the East Wellmouth depot-wagon, had undergone the
experience several times in the course of his professional career, but
each time he vowed vehemently that he would not repeat it; he would
"heave up" his job first.

He was vowing it now. Perched on the edge of the depot wagon's front