Page:Cornelia Meigs-The Pirate of Jasper Peak.djvu/14

 suppose. No one really stays at Rudolm except them that are born there and can’t get  away.”

Hugh shook his head.

“I am going to stay all winter,” he said.

“The whole winter! Say, do you know what winter is up here?” the man exclaimed. “For the love of—”

A violent jolt of the train was the engineer’s reminder that friendly converse was not in order  when there was time to be made up.

“All right, sah, good-by. I hope you like staying, only remember—we go through every  day at six in the morning less’n we’re late. Good-by.”

The train swept away, leaving Hugh to look after it for a moment before he turned to take  his first survey of Rudolm and the wide sheet of blue water upon whose shore it stood.

Red Lake, when he and his father had first looked it up on the map, seemed a queer, crooked  place, full of harbors and headlands and hidden  coves, the wider stretches extending here and