The porter was lighting the lamps. While they talked it had grown
quite dark. Losing time every mile of the way, the train,
frost-crusted to the eyelids, got into Sleepy Cat at half-past six
o'clock; four hours late.
The crowded yard, as they pulled through it, showed the tie-up of the
day's traffic. Long lines of freight cars filled the trackage, and
overloaded switch engines struggled with ever-growing burdens to avert
the inevitable blockade of the night. Glover's anxiety, as he left the
train at the station, was as to whether he could catch anything on the
Glen Tarn branch to take him up to the Springs that night, for there he
was resolved to get before morning if he had to take an engine for the
run.
As he started up the narrow hall leading to the telegraph office he
heard the rustle of skirts above. Someone was descending the stairway,
and with his face in the light he halted.
"Oh, Mr. Glover."
"Why--Miss Brock!" It was Gertrude.
"What in the world--" he began. His broken voice was very natural, she
thought, but there was amazement in his utterance. He noticed there
was little color in her face; the deep boa of fur nestling about her
throat might account for that.
"What a chance that I should meet you!" she exclaimed, her back hard
against the side wall, for the hall was narrow and brought them face to
face. She spoke on. "Did you get my----?"
"Did I?" he echoed slowly; "I have travelled every minute since
yesterday afternoon to get here----"
Her uneasy laugh interrupted him. "It was hardly worth while, all
that."
"--and I was just going up to find out about getting to Glen Tarn."
"Glen Tarn! I left Glen Tarn this afternoon all alone to go to
Medicine Bend--papa is there, did you know? He came yesterday with all
the directors. Our car was attached for me to the afternoon train
coming down." She was certainly wrought up, he thought. "But when we
reached here the train I should have taken for Medicine Bend had not
come----"
"It is here now."
"Thank heaven, is it?"
"I came in on it."
"Then I can start at last! I have been so nervous. Is this our train?
They said our car couldn't be attached to this train, and that I should
have to go down in one of the sleepers. I don't understand it at all.
Will you have the car sent back to Glen Tarn in the morning, Mr.
Glover? And would you get my handbag? I was nearly run over a while
ago by some engine or other. I mustn't miss this train----"
"Never fear, never fear," said Glover.
"But I cannot miss it. Be very, very sure, won't you?"