across rocky pasture-lands where stupid-eyed cattle were loafing. It was
fun to scare lazy-looking cows that lay round in groups under the newly
budded trees near the railroad track.

We did not pause at any of the little brown stations on the route (they
looked just like overgrown black-walnut clocks), though at every one of
them a man popped out as if he were worked by machinery, and waved a red
flag, and appeared as though he would like to have us stop. But we were
an express train, and made no stoppages, excepting once or twice to give
the engine a drink. It is strange how the memory clings to some things.
It is over twenty years since I took that first ride to Rivermouth,
and yet, oddly enough, I remember as if it were yesterday, that, as we
passed slowly through the village of Hampton, we saw two boys fighting
behind a red barn. There was also a shaggy yellow dog, who looked as
if he had commenced to unravel, barking himself all up into a knot with
excitement. We had only a hurried glimpse of the battle--long enough,
however, to see that the combatants were equally matched and very much
in earnest. I am ashamed to say how many times since I have speculated
as to which boy got licked. Maybe both the small rascals are dead now
(not in consequence of the set-to, let us hope), or maybe they are
married, and have pugnacious urchins of their own; yet to this day I
sometimes find myself wondering how that fight turned out.

We had been riding perhaps two hours and a half, when we shot by a tall
factory with a chimney resembling a church steeple; then the locomotive
gave a scream, the engineer rang his bell, and we plunged into the
twilight of a long wooden building, open at both ends. Here we stopped,
and the conductor, thrusting his head in at the car door, cried out,
"Passengers for Rivermouth!"