That day he had delivered Tom’s dinner to him in the porters’ room and was retracing his steps down the platform when he saw two of the Grammar School boys emerge in a confused whirl of battle and sag, interlocked, towards the line, hopelessly unconscious in their struggle of an incoming train. They reached the edge, deaf to all warning cries, and long before help could reach them, fell over it in one entangled mass. One boy, aroused to a sense of their common danger, was on his feet nimbly enough and across the line to safety: the other, Lance Travers, stayed where he fell, with a leg broken against the rail. Wits left the first lad; he could only howl as the engine swept inexorably on, and adult help, though active, could not avail in time. Sam had no precise recollection of what followed, and certainly acted on impulse. He dived to the line and dragged the injured boy across, escaping death for both by the skin of his teeth.
After that, all was confusion: an ambulance; inquiries; names taken and so on; and Sam only came to himself when he discovered that he was being punished for arriving late at school. It struck him as unfair, but he did not realize that he was a hero till the evening paper told him so. He, Samuel Branstone, had his name in the paper! Glory could go no further, because those were the dark ages of journalism, before the photograph illustrated all, and to read one’s name in print was then the apogee. We have moved since those dull days, when “heart interest” was still to be in vented.
What profound satisfaction Anne Branstone found in that sober paragraph her son was not to know. She did not think it good for him to know, but she went about her house with softened eyes, and Sam heard her singing more than once; so per haps he may have guessed that she was pleased with him.
It was more than she allowed Mr. Oscar Travers to guess, he was Lance’s father, an estate agent with a good suburban practice, and Anne met him at the door in a way which would have marred Sam’s future had Travers not known that Lancashire women are apt to be undemonstrative. She found a portly gentleman on the doorstep and thought he wore a patronizing air. They resent patronage in Lancashire.