They went along, down shaded lower Main Street, and took at length the left-hand turn that led toward the station. Gergue walked in silence, and Hollow, after a few futile efforts at conversation, gave it up and pattered at the taller man’s side without speaking. Gergue seemed to be thinking, thinking hard. A branch line connects Hardiston with the main line of the B. & O. to Washington. Two trains a day traverse this branch in each direction. One of these trains is called the Mail; the other the Accommodation; but the source of these titles is not apparent, for both trains carry mail, and both are most accommodating. Perhaps the Accommodation is more so than the Mail, for at times it has a freight car attached between tender and baggage car, and this is an indignity which the Mail never suffers. The station at Hardiston is a three-room structure of imitation hollow tiles. That is to say, it is built of wood sheathed with tin which is stamped in the likeness of tiles. These tin walls have an uncanny faculty for keeping the rooms inside the station at fever heat, summer and winter. One of these rooms is the Men’s Waiting Room; another is for feminine patrons of the road; and between the two is the ticket office and dispatcher’s room, with telegraph instruments clattering on a table in the bay window at the front. The station agent is a busy man, with three or four hard-worked assistants; for all the supplies for one of the big furnaces come in over this branch, and the furnace’s product goes out by the same route. The furnace itself towers above the very station, great ore piles spraddling over acres of ground waiting for the traveling crane that scoops them and carries the ore to the fires. On the other side of the station, across the street, there are two buildings with ornate fronts--and locked doors. They proclaim themselves as buildings with a past--a bibulous past. County local option was their ruin, county local option locked their doors and stripped their shelves and spread dust upon their bars. They are ugly things, eyesores, specters of shame. Whatever may be said for the wares they dispense, there is nothing more hideous than a saloon. Gergue and Hollow crossed the street at a diagonal, past these locked saloons, to the station platform. They found on the platform a familiar throng. Hardiston was the county seat, and served as market place for the southern half of the county. Many people came and went daily on the dirty, rattling, uncomfortable trains; and this, the afternoon train, always picked up a score or so of passengers southward bound. In addition to these travelers, there were folk at the station to meet every incoming passenger; for Hardiston still meets people at the train. Guests, home-comers, even the commercial travelers find a welcome waiting. Every one in the neighborhood stops at the station at train time to pick up matters for gossip.