It was Tom Walker who had suddenly entered, his bushy beard whitened by the snow–flakes dropping without.
“If you hadn’t mentioned it, Cap’n, I was goin’ to, this very day. I thought it was dickerlus and didn’t b’lieve it was worth noticin’ at fust; but it’s got so at last, I should have spoken of it if you hadn’t, and Woodbury would if I hadn’t.”
“That’s so, Cap’n, every word of it!” and now behind Tom, appeared Woodbury at the door, brushing the snow off from his coat. “That’s so,” he continued, and he looked at Walter not at all in the gimlet fashion, but a friendly smile of recognition lightened up his handsome face.
“Oh, you are of my mind, boys,” said the keeper. “I knew Walter wouldn’t do that thing. It is not his style at all.”
“Now, Cap’n, I want to know who has been accusing me,” said Walter. “This thing must be looked into.”
“That is only fair. Several have mentioned it, but Joe Cardridge seems to be the special one.”
“Joe Cardridge! Where is he?” asked Walter looking at the boat–room door, the outer door, the door leading upstairs to the crew’s room. “Where is he? I’ll get him and bring him here and face the charges here.”
He was starting off, trying to go in several directions at once, when the keeper said, “Hold on, Walter. It is Joe’s day off. He is not within a mile of this place now, but he will be back I s’pose in time to go on his beat. This thing shall be looked into.”
“I insist upon it that it shall,” said Walter.
The weather outside was not at all attractive to the patrolmen that day, and when the twilight drew its dusky curtains about the station, the outlook was still bad. A north–west wind was blowing very strong and cutting. Snow was still falling in light, dry flakes. What was already on the ground served as a plaything to the wind that seemed to be intelligently and maliciously gathering it up and then hurling it into the faces of all travelers, flinging it over their heads in blinding, cutting sheets, withdrawing these until its victim walked in an easy, careless confidence, then sending the snow again in sheets more closely folding and stifling and cutting.
“You’d better wrap up specially warm,” was Tom Walker’s reminder to Walter, who went on to his beat at night.