It grew still again, deadly still, after Hosea Giddings and his vows were out of hearing, and Phin felt that sleep was again settling down upon him. He found a ball of very stout linen twine--that was not a bad scheme if the string were strong enough; but this time he tied the end to his own wrist. A pull upon that would be more certain to awaken him than any noise. Two trains before the No. 39 express; after they had passed, a string would not serve, for that must be stopped with the red lantern.
He lay down again upon the lounge; the last thing that he remembered was feeling for the string about his wrist, to be sure that it was tight.
He was hurled violently across the floor; he felt an almost unendurable pain; there was a crash, as if heaven and earth came together, and then--was it a long time or only a moment afterwards that he saw Mary Jane's face bending over him? She had put water upon his face, and something redder than water was trickling from his wrist.
That twine had been strong enough to drag him, and it had cut his wrist almost to the bone; his head had hit the stove, and all those things that he had forgotten to take off it had come down and hit him.
"I had such a bad dream I just got up and came! I couldn't help it," he heard Mary Jane say.
It all seemed to him like a bad dream; but he heard himself say eagerly, although it sounded to him like a far-away voice, "No. 39 express, stop it! stop it!"
There was in the distance the thunder of a train. Mary Jane seized the red lantern from its nail and rushed out.
Though he was still half stupefied, Phin staggered to his feet and made his way to the door; in the moonlight he could see the flutter of Mary Jane's plaid shawl as she stood on the track.
The train slowed up, and came to a stop only a few feet from the plaid shawl.
The conductor demanded an explanation in an excited voice; the engineer and the brakeman were complaining in strong language that the train was behind time, and shouldn't have been stopped unless for a matter of life and death.
Phin had made his way to the track, although he was faint and dizzy; but his voice failed him when he tried to speak, for he realized in a flash that it was the Ganges branch train that Mary Jane had stopped!