You haven't any idea, Jim, how much bustle and noise and excitement and general enthusiasm a passenger train can put into a small town for a few minutes. Just imagine yourself in Homeburg on a cold winter afternoon. It's four o'clock. The sun has stood the climate as long as it can and is getting ready to duck for shelter behind the dreary fields to the west. If you ran an automobile a mile a minute down the walk on Main Street you wouldn't have to toot for a soul. Now and then a farmer comes out of a store, takes a half hitch on the muffler around his neck, puts on his bearskin gloves and unties his rig. You watch him drive off, the wheels yelling on the hard snow, and wonder if it isn't more cheerful out in the frozen country with the corn shocks for company. It's the terrible half hour of bleak, fading light before the electricity is turned on and the cozy dark comes down--the loneliest hour of the winter's day. You've stood it about as long as you can, when you notice signs of life across the street. Three men carrying satchels are steering for the depot. Dorgan's dray is rattling down the street. Dorgan's dray would make a cheerful noise if it was the last sound on earth. Little flocks and groups of people begin plodding across the square. You know them all. Gibb Ogle is going over to watch the baggageman load trunks. It is Gibb's life work. Pelty Amthorne is a little late, but he'll have time to arrange himself against the east end door and answer the roll-call, as he has for thirty years. Miss Ollie Mingle is going over too. She must be expecting that Paynesville young man again. If the competition between her and Ri Hawkes gets any keener, Ollie will have to meet the train down at the crossing and nab the young man there. Sim Atkinson is taking a handful of letters down to the station as usual. Ever since he had his row with Postmaster Flint, he has refused to add to the receipts of the office, and buys his stamps of the mail clerk. It is Sim's hope and dream that sometime the annual receipts of the Homeburg post-office will just miss being enough to bring a raise in salary. Then Sim will bring it to Flint's attention that he would have bought his ten dollars' worth of stamps that year at home, if Flint hadn't advertised his lock box for rent when he neglected the quarterly dues. Watching Sim thirst for revenge is as much fun as having a real Indian in town.