“I don't want to borrow any money, Jack, thank you just the same,” Walton said. “When I get to Atlanta I'll look around and see what will turn up.” And, stifling a groan of despair, he sank back on the cot.
“All right, old man,” the conductor responded. “Now, go to sleep. You need rest.” He turned the wick of the lamp down and pushed his lantern into a corner, so that its light would not fall on the face of his guest. Then he slid the bench to the open door, lighted his pipe, and fell into a revery.
|THE cot was hard and narrow, and it had sides of unpadded boards. For hours Fred lay pretending to be asleep, that he might shirk the sheer torture of conversation with his friend. Through partly closed eyelids he watched the railroad man as he sat in the doorway looking out at the rapidly shifting night view. When a station was reached the conductor would spring up, and with his lantern swinging in his hand he would descend to the ground and wave his light or call out an order to a switchman or the man at the brakes. Then the creaking, mechanical reptile would crawl along and speed away again. Several times the miserable passenger dozed off into most delectable dreams. In them he was always with Margaret in some fragrant spot among flowers, by flowing streams, and in wondrous sunshine. Once he saw General Sylvester and his grim old father in congenial converse together, while he and Margaret stood hand in hand near by, and then his beautiful, haughty sweetheart put her arms about the grizzled neck of the man who had never known affection and kissed him. But she was fading away, as was the erect old soldier, and the dreamer found himself before his father at the old man's desk in the bank. And now Simon Walton's face was dark as night. A ledger lay open before him. “Five thousand dollars of my hard-earned money!” the old man shrieked. “And you deliberately stole it from my vault! Thief! Thief! Thief!” Simon's lips continued to move, but no sound save a dismal, mechanical rumbling issued. There was a long scream of the steam-whistle, a thunderous bumping of cars one against another, the rasping rattle of brake-chains, a glare of yellow light, and Fred saw Thomas standing over him, his lantern's rays thrown downward.