THE PORTYGEE


By Joseph Crosby Lincoln




CHAPTER I


Overhead the clouds cloaked the sky; a ragged cloak it was, and, here
and there, a star shone through a hole, to be obscured almost instantly
as more cloud tatters were hurled across the rent. The pines threshed on
the hill tops. The bare branches of the wild-cherry and silverleaf trees
scraped and rattled and tossed. And the wind, the raw, chilling December
wind, driven in, wet and salty, from the sea, tore over the dunes and
brown uplands and across the frozen salt-meadows, screamed through
the telegraph wires, and made the platform of the dismal South Harniss
railway station the lonesomest, coldest, darkest and most miserable spot
on the face of the earth.

At least that was the opinion of the seventeen-year-old boy whom the
down train--on time for once and a wonder--had just deposited upon that
platform. He would not have discounted the statement one iota. The South
Harniss station platform WAS the most miserable spot on earth and he was
the most miserable human being upon it. And this last was probably true,
for there were but three other humans upon that platform and, judging by
externals, they seemed happy enough. One was the station agent, who was
just entering the building preparatory to locking up for the night,