"Bees'n Lake!" cried Jimmy fiercely through an aperture of the door.

"You'll find th' boardin'-house just across over the track," said
the woodsman, holding out his hand, "so long. See you again if you
don't find a job with the Old Fellow. My name's Shearer."

"Mine is Thorpe," replied the other. "Thank you."

The woodsman stepped forward past the carousers to the baggage
compartment, where he disappeared. The revellers stumbled out the
other door.

Thorpe followed and found himself on the frozen platform of a
little dark railway station. As he walked, the boards shrieked
under his feet and the sharp air nipped at his face and caught his
lungs. Beyond the fence-rail protection to the side of the platform
he thought he saw the suggestion of a broad reach of snow, a
distant lurking forest, a few shadowy buildings looming mysterious
in the night. The air was twinkling with frost and the brilliant
stars of the north country.

Directly across the track from the railway station, a single
building was picked from the dark by a solitary lamp in a lower-
story room. The four who had descended before Thorpe made over
toward this light, stumbling and laughing uncertainly, so he knew
it was probably in the boarding-house, and prepared to follow them.
Shearer and the station agent,--an individual much muffled,--turned
to the disposition of some light freight that had been dropped from
the baggage car.