And when, having slid back the crazy door at the nearer end of the car, they entered it and seated themselves on the benches, it didn’t look nearly so unpromising. There was a good, stout floor underfoot and a reasonably tight roof overhead. Wayne began to see possibilities.

The car was only about twelve feet long and of the usual width. At some time a matched-board partition had divided it into two compartments, but this had nearly all disappeared. Every pane of glass, and there had been eighteen in all, counting those in the doors, were either smashed or totally missing. Over one window at each end and over three of the six windows at each side boards had been nailed. The remains of a flimsy curtain hung over the glass of the forward door. From the roof two lamp fixtures still depended, but the lamps were gone. The floor was littered with trash, including newspaper and tin cans and cracker boxes and scraps of dried bread, indicating that the place had been used for picnic purposes. In a corner at the farther end a small “air-tight” stove was set on a board placed on the seat. It was badly rusted, the upper door hung by one hinge, the mica was broken out, and the interior was filled with ashes and charred embers. Between stove and ceiling there was no pipe. Wayne tried the door at that end, but it was jammed so tightly that he couldn’t budge it.

An inspection of the outside followed. The trucks had been discarded and the body of the car rested on four six-inch sills, two running lengthwise and two across. An attempt had apparently been made to set fire to the car, for at one side the woodwork was scorched and the end of a sill burned away for nearly a foot. The inscription, “Medfield Street Railway Co.,” in faded brown letters against the faded yellow body, was still legible, as was the figure 6, preceding and following it.

“I’d like to know what number 1 looks like,” said Wayne, “if this is number 6!”

Everything of value in the way of metal had been removed, even to the brass hand rails and sill plates. The only glass that had escaped destruction consisted of a number of long and narrow panes in the roof, of which less than half remained intact. As Wayne discovered later, these were set in hinged frames that could be opened for ventilating purposes. On the front platform—they designated it the front merely because it seemed natural to call one front and one back, and that was the one outside the jammed door—a dozen sticks of wood suggested the location of the fuel pile at some time. Ashes had been disposed of by merely emptying them over the front dash. June discovered the missing stovepipe lying a few yards away, but it was so rusted that it came to pieces when he tried to lift it from the ground. Other untidy evidences of former occupation and more recent vandalism lay around: an iron skillet with the handle broken off, a bent and twisted toaster, many empty cans, a worn and sodden rope doormat, a length of rotted clothes line of which one end was tied to a ten-foot pole set some six yards away.

“I wonder,” mused Wayne, “who lived here. And why they went away. And I wonder most of all, June, how they got this thing out here in the middle of this marsh.”

But June was ready with a quite feasible explanation, which was that the car had been loaded onto a truck and hauled there. “Reckon in the summer this yere field is all dried up, Mas’ Wayne.”

As it was getting on toward the middle of the afternoon by now it behooved them to set about preparing the domicile for occupation. They discarded their coats and set to work and in an hour had accomplished marvels. The floor was cleared of rubbish, Wayne requiring June to carry it well away from the vicinity of the car before disposing of it, dust was obliterated with the fragment of curtain, some loose boards were nailed back into place over the windows—the broken skillet served as a hammer—the stove door was rehung with a bent nail, ashes were removed, and the refractory rear door was coaxed into obedience by digging away the dirt beneath it with a pocket knife.

After that the principal demands were stovepipe and covering for the broken windows. They thought later of many other things that were sorely needed, but just now those wants took precedence. It was out of the question to find stovepipe nearer than town, unless, as June suggested, some rubbish dump supplied it, and so they tackled the matter of covering the windows. For that they needed boards, or some other material, and nails. And a hammer would have helped a lot, although the skillet did fairly well in the emergency. There was enough of the partition left to supply boards for one window, but they had no nails, and a search through the ash pile failed to provide more than four bent and rusted ones. So it was decided that June should walk back to the stamping works and see if he could find, beg, or borrow some. Also, he was to be on the lookout for anything that might be used in making the new home weather tight. In the meanwhile Wayne was to “projeck ’roun’,” as June phrased it, and collect anything useful that could be found.

June went off, whistling blithely, and Wayne began his search. The new abode stood about two hundred yards from the railroad embankment, at this point a good eight feet above the meadow, and possibly half again as far from the nearest building which was the stamping works. Beyond the latter were a number of other factories, puffing steam or smoke into the afternoon sunlight, and beyond these began the town. Standing on the front porch, which was the term ultimately applied to the rear platform, the view to the left ended at the railroad embankment, but to the right Wayne could see for nearly a mile. A few scattered houses indicated the dirt road in that direction and beyond the houses was some tilled land, and, finally, a fringe of trees. In front lay the edge of the town, with the town itself, overhung by a haze of smoke, a good mile beyond. On the fourth side, visible when Wayne stepped off the “porch” to the soggy ground, the meadow continued for another hundred yards to a rail fence. Beyond the fence was a ploughed field which sloped off and up to meet the blue March sky. Between car and railroad a group of trees attracted Wayne’s attention, and he set out for it across the squishy meadow. Half-way to it he caught sight of water and recalled June’s mention of a “branch.” It proved to be a tiny brook that, emerging from a culvert under the tracks, wandered as far as the tiny grove and then curved off to the rail fence and followed it across the fields in the direction of the road. The water was clear and cold and tasted very good to the boy. Just now the brook was overflowing its bed in places, but the little knoll on which the cluster of trees grew was high and dry underfoot.

The brook offered treasure-trove in the shape of a number of short planks and pieces of boxes rudely nailed together, doubtless representing the efforts of some boy to construct a raft. Wayne doubted its seaworthiness after he had experimentally pushed it back into the water and tried his weight on it. He floated it along to the nearest point to the car, getting his feet thoroughly wet in the process, and then, not without much panting and frequent rests, dragged it the balance of the way. After that he ranged the field in all directions, returning several times with his loads of wood for fuel or window repairs. He had quite a respectable pile on the front platform by the time June returned.

The darkey brought a whole pocketful of nails and a number of sheets of tin of various sizes which he had salvaged from the waste heap. Few were larger than fifteen or sixteen inches in any direction, but together they would turn the wind and rain at one window at least. The nails had been given him by a man in the office. He had, he said, requested a hammer, too, but the man’s generosity had balked there. They set to work with the materials at hand and inside of the next hour accounted for four windows and part of a fifth, leaving six still open to the winds of Heaven. They made a systematic search for more boards, but failed to find any. Foiled, they entered their new home and sat down for a brief rest.

The sight of the groceries presented a new quandary to Wayne. “Look here, June,” he exclaimed. “We’ve got coffee and milk and sugar, and we know where there’s water, but we haven’t anything to boil it in!”

“My goodness!” said June. “Ain’ that a fac’? What we-all goin’ to do, Mas’ Wayne?”

Wayne shook his head helplessly. “I don’t know,” he answered. “I reckon that skillet wouldn’t do, would it?”

It wouldn’t, as an examination proved, for when the handle had broken off it had taken a generous piece of the skillet with it. June studied the situation hard, cupping his chin in his hands and gazing at the scuffed toes of his shoes. “I reckon,” he said finally, “we jus’ got to eat that coffee. ’Sides,” he continued, “how we goin’ to boil it, anyway, without no fire?”

“We could build a fire outside,” answered Wayne. “For that matter, we could build one in the stove. I reckon the smoke wouldn’t bother us much seeing half our windows are open! But we’ve got to have a coffee-pot or a pan or something. We surely were chumps, June,” he ended sadly.

“How come we didn’ think of that, Mas’ Wayne?”

“There’s something else we didn’t think of,” replied the other. “We didn’t think of anything to drink it out of, either!”

“I ain’ botherin’ so much about that,” said June. “Jus’ you cook me that coffee an’ see! But we surely has got to have somethin’ to——” He stopped abruptly. “How much money we got, Mas’ Wayne?” he asked eagerly.

“Five cents. You can’t get a coffee-pot for five cents, I reckon.”

“Give me he,” said June, jumping up. “I’ll go on back yonder an’ ask that man in the tin factory to sell me a five-cent kettle or somethin’, Mas’ Wayne. He’s a nice man an’ I reckon when I tell him we can’ get no supper without he sells it to us he goin’ do it. Jus’ you wait, Mas’ Wayne.”

“All right,” laughed Wayne. “And ask him to throw in two tin cups and a candle and a blanket or two and——”

“No, sir, I ain’ goin’ to ask no imposs’bilities,” replied June, showing his teeth in a broad grin, “but I certainly am goin’ to projeck mightily aroun’ that tin pile. I reckon there’s a heap more pieces like I done fetched if I can fin’ ’em.”

“Maybe I’d better go along,” said Wayne, giving June the nickel.

“No, sir, you stay right here an’ rest yourself, Mas’ Wayne. I can ’tend to that man without no help. Jus’ you get them victuals ready—— What’s the matter, Mas’ Wayne?”

“Oh, nothing,” groaned Wayne, setting down the paper bag he had untied. “Only I forgot to ask them to grind the coffee, June!”

“Lawsy-y-y!”

They gazed dejectedly at each other for a moment. Then June chuckled. “I reckon I’ll jus’ have to ask that Mister Man to throw in a coffee grinder, too!” he said. “Ain’ there no way to make coffee out of that, Mas’ Wayne?”

“There must be,” was the answer. “If we can’t do it any other way, we’ll grind it with our teeth! You run along and see what you can find, June, and I’ll try to think up a way of grinding the coffee.”

So June departed again and Wayne faced his problem, and when, some twenty minutes later, the darkey returned in triumph with a tin coffee-pot, a tin dish, a tin spoon, and several more sheets of the metal dug from the waste heap enough coffee for the evening meal was ready and Wayne was grinding the rest of their supply between two flat stones! “There’s more than one way to grind coffee,” he laughed, as June paused in the doorway to regard the proceeding in pardonable surprise. “I just remembered the way the Indians used to grind their corn. Or was it the Egyptians? Someone, anyhow. I had a dickens of a time finding these stones, though. There, that’s the last. It isn’t very fine, but I guess it will do well enough.”

“Don’ it smell jus’ gran’?” asked June, sniffing the fragrance. “An’ look what I fetched, please, Mas’ Wayne. Look yere! Ain’ that a pretty fine coffee-pot? An’ ain’ that a pretty fine little dish? An’ look yere at the spoon! All them for a nickel, Mas’ Wayne! That man certainly was good to me, yes, sir! I done tell him I ain’ got but a nickel an’ he say: ‘Nickel’s enough, nigger. What-all you wantin’?’ He say these yere things is ‘second,’ whatever he mean, but I reckon they goin’ to suit us all righty, ain’ they?”

“They’re fine, June! You surely know how to get your money’s worth. But where are the blankets I told you to fetch?”

“He goin’ to send them over in the mornin’,” replied June gravely. “Didn’ have none good enough, he say. How soon we goin’ to cook that coffee, Mas’ Wayne?”

“Not for a long time yet,” said Wayne resolutely. “We aren’t going to have any supper at all until all these windows are fixed, June. It’s getting cold in here already and we’ll just naturally freeze tonight if we don’t get something over them. Come on and get to work. Where’s the tin?”

It was almost twilight when they actually finished the undertaking. It is doubtful if they would have finished at all that evening if June hadn’t discovered a piece of tar paper nearly three yards long and a yard wide near the railroad embankment. It was torn and held some holes, but it was far better than nothing and it covered three windows, with the aid of a few pieces of wood found in the same locality. Those windows presented a strange appearance, but nobody cared about the looks of them. At least, when the door was closed and the stove was going, the car was warm enough for comfort even if the smoke did bring tears to their eyes. Until the coffee was boiled they kept the fire up, but after that they were very glad to let it go out. They had the equivalent of two cups of coffee apiece and finished most of the bread and butter. They were very hungry and it was so much easier to satisfy present appetites than to give thought to the morrow. The coffee was somewhat muddy, but, as June said ecstatically, “it certainly did taste scrumptuous!”

After supper they sat huddled in a corner of the seat opposite the dying fire and talked. For some reason their thoughts tonight dwelt largely with Sleepersville, and Wayne wondered this and June that, and they decided that at the very first opportunity Wayne was to write back there and let his stepfather and June’s mother know that they were alive and well. And they wondered about Sam, too, and how he would like this new home. And presently they stretched themselves out on the seat, sharing the horse blanket as best they could, and slumbered soundly.