Page:Ruth Fielding at Lighthouse Point.djvu/165

Rh the train whistle for the Sandtown station, and everybody dressed in a hurry, believing that "W. Hicks" would soon be at the bungalow.

There were no public carriages at the station to meet that early train, and Miss Kate had doubted about sending anybody to meet the person who had telegraphed. In something like an hour, however, they saw a tall man, all in black, striding along the sandy road toward the house.

As he came nearer he was seen to be a big-boned man, with broad shoulders, long arms, and a huge reddish mustache, the ends of which drooped almost to his collar. Such a mustache none of them had ever seen before. His black clothes would have fitted a man who weighed a good fifty pounds more than he did, and so the garments hung baggily upon him. He wore a huge, black slouched hat, with immensely broad brim.

He strode immediately to the back door—that being the nearest to the road by which he came—and the boys and girls in the breakfast room crowded to the windows to see him. He looked neither to right nor left, however, but walked right into the kitchen, where they at once heard a thunderous voice demand:

"Whar's my Jane Ann? Whar's my Jane Ann, I say?"

Mammy Laura evidently took his appearance