Myles, on the other hand, as he walked down the street, was thinking.
“Ben doesn’t seem half a bad fellow, after all. He has decidedly changed for the better since last June, and I shouldn’t wonder if he proved a great help to me in this place.”
He found the telegraph operator to be a brisk, wide-awake young man, who said he was ready to handle any amount of press matter, and who also promised to send word to Myles if any thing important took place during the night.
Leaving the office Myles started toward the railway station, which was only a block farther on, to assure himself that every thing about it was still quiet. As he reached its broad platform he noticed there a child four or five years old, and wondered what such a little thing could be doing all alone in such a place at that hour, for it was now about eight o’clock. Stepping up to the child he asked:
“My name Bobby,” replied the child, gravely, lifting a roguish but self-possessed little face to look at the tall young fellow bending over him.
As the light from a reflector hung outside the station fell on it, Myles thought he had never seen a sweeter or more winning face on a child, and he at once became greatly interested in the little fellow.
“Well, Bobby, where do you live?” he asked.
“Over there.” And the child pointed vaguely into the darkness behind them.
“But what are you doing out here so late, and all alone? Don’t you know it is high time for all good little boys to be in bed?”
“Why, my papa is my papa,” answered the child, with an air of surprise that any one should ask such a question.
“Well, where is your papa, then?” asked Myles, looking about with the expectation of seeing a papa at no great distance.
Here the child pointed to a freight train that had just hauled in on a siding beyond the tracks of the main line. Then crying out, “I see my papa,” the child jumped from the platform, and, before Myles could stop him, was running across the tracks toward a twinkling lantern that was approaching from the direction of the freight train.
All at once, with a cry of pain, the child fell directly across one of the glistening lines of steel.
Myles sprang toward him. As he did so the eastbound night express dashed, with a shriek and a roar, out from behind a round-house that had, until that moment, concealed it, and rushed with fiery breath and gleaming head-light toward where the child lay.