relaxed, scarcely aware of the abominable choice he had faced.
"NT. NT. NT."
His own call. Tolliver shrank from the sharp blows. He forced himself to a minute attention. It was division headquarters.
"Holding twenty-one here until thirty-three and the special have cleared."
Twenty-one was a freight. It was a relief to have that off the road for the emergency. He lay back when the striking at his head had ceased.
It was unfortunate that Joe and he alone should be employed at the tower. Relieving each other at regular intervals, they had never been at the house together. Either Tolliver had been there alone with his wife and his son—or Joe had been. The two men had seen each other too little, only momentarily in this busy room. They didn't really know each other.
"LR. LR. LR."
Tolliver shook his head savagely. It had been a mistake letting Joe board with them at all. Any man would fall in love with Sally. Yet Tolliver had thought after that definite quarrel Joe would have known his place; the danger would have ended.
It was probably this drinking at the country inn where Joe lived now that had made the man brood. The inn was too small and removed to attract the revenue officers, and the liquid manufactured and sold there was designed to make a man daring, irrational, deadly.
Tolliver shrank from the assaults of the sounder.
Where was Joe now? At the inn, drinking; or——
He jotted down the outpourings of the voluble key. More and more it became clear that the special and thirty-three would meet near his tower, but it would almost certainly be after midnight when Joe would have relieved him. He watched the clock, often pressing his fingers against his temples in an attempt to make bearable the hammering at his brain, unequal and persistent.
While the hands crawled towards midnight the wind increased, shrieking around the tower as if the pounding angered it.
Above the shaking of the windows Tolliver caught another sound, gentle and disturbing, as if countless fingers tapped softly, simultaneously against the panes.
He arose and raised one of the sashes. The wind tore triumphantly in, bearing a quantity of snowflakes that fluttered to the floor, expiring. Under his breath Tolliver swore. He leaned out, peering through the storm. The red and green signal lamps were blurred. He shrugged his shoulders. Anyway, Joe would relieve him before the final orders came, before either train was in the section.
Tolliver clenched his hands. If Joe didn't come!
He shrank from the force of his imagination.
He was glad Sally had the revolver.
He glanced at his watch, half believing that the clock had stopped.
There at last it was, both hands pointing straight up—midnight! And Tolliver heard only the storm and the unbearable strokes of the telegraph sounder. It was fairly definite now. Both trains were roaring through the storm, destined almost certainly to slip by each other at this siding within the next hour.
Where was Joe? And Sally and the boy alone at the house!
Quarter past twelve.
What vast interest could have made Joe forget his relief at the probable loss of his job?
Tolliver glanced from the rear window towards his home, smothered in the night and the storm. If he might only run there quickly to make sure that Sally was all right!
The sounder jarred furiously. Tolliver half raised his hand, as if to destroy it.
It was the division superintendent himself at the key.
"NT. NT. NT. Is it storming bad with you?"
"Pretty thick."
"Then keep the fuses burning. For God's sake, don't let the first in over-run his switch. And clear the line like lightning. Those fellows are driving faster than hell."
Tolliver's mouth opened, but no sound came. His face assumed the expression of one who undergoes the application of some destructive barbarity.
"I get afraid when you leave me alone this way at night."
He visualized his wife, beautiful, dark, and desirable, urging him not to go to the tower.
A gust of wind sprang through the trap door. The yellow slips fluttered. He ran to the trap. He heard the lower door bang shut. Someone was on the stairs, climbing with difficulty, breathing hard. A hat, crusted with snow, appeared. There came slowly into the light Joe's face, ugly and inflamed; the eyes restless with a grave indecision.
Tolliver's first elation died in new uncertainty.
"Where you been?" he demanded fiercely.
Joe struggled higher until he sat on the flooring, his legs dangling through the trap. He laughed in an ugly and unnatural note; and Tolliver saw that there was more than drink, more than sleeplessness, recorded in his scarlet face. Hatred was there. It escaped, too, from the streaked eyes that looked at Tolliver as if through a veil. He spoke thickly.
"Don't you wish you knew?"
Tolliver stooped, grasping the man's shoulders. In each fist he clenched bunches of wet cloth. In a sort of desperation he commenced to shake the bundled figure.
"You tell me where you been——"
"NT. NT. NT."
Joe leered.
"Joe! You got to tell me where you been."
The pounding took Tolliver's strength. He crouched lower in an effort to avoid it, but each blow struck as hard as before, forcing into his brain word after word that he passionately resented. Places, hours, minutes—the details of this vital passage of two trains in the unfriendly night.
"Switch whichever arrives first, and hold until the other is through."
It was difficult to understand clearly, because Joe's laughter persisted, crashing against Tolliver's brain as brutally as the sounder.
"You got to tell me if you been bothering Sally."
The hatred and the cunning of the mottled face grew.
"Why don't you ask Sally?"
Slowly Tolliver let the damp cloth slip from his fingers. He straightened, facing more definitely that abominable choice. He glanced at his cap and overcoat. The lazy clock hands reminded him that he had remained in the tower nearly half an hour beyond his time. Joe was right. It was clear he could satisfy himself only by going home and asking Sally.
"Get up," he directed. "I guess you got sense enough to know you're on duty."
Joe struggled to his feet and lurched to the table. Tolliver wondered at the indecision in the other's eyes, which was more apparent. Joe fumbled aimlessly with the yellow slips. Tolliver's fingers, outstretched toward his coat, hesitated, as if groping for
