Standing behind him, Glover, with a hand on a roof-brace, steadied

himself. In spite of the comforts he had arranged for her, Gertrude,

in her corner, felt a lonely sense of being in the way. In her

father's car there was never lacking the waiting deference of trainmen;

in the cab the men did not even see her.

In the seclusion of the car a storm hardly made itself felt; in the cab

she seemed under the open sky. The wind buffeted the glass at her

side, rattled in its teeth the door in front of her, drank the steaming

flame from the stack monstrously, and dashed the cinders upon the thin

roof above her head with terrifying force. With the gathering speed of

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the engine the cracking exhaust ran into a confusing din that deafened

her, and she was shaken and jolted. The plunging of the cab grew

violent, and with every lurch her cushion shifted alarmingly. She

resented Glover's placing himself so far away, and could not see that

he even looked toward her. The furnace door slammed until she thought

the fireman must have thrown in coal enough to last till morning, but

unable to realize the danger of overloading the fire he stopped only

long enough to turn various valve-wheels about her feet, and with his

back bent resumed his hammering and shovelling as if his very salvation

were at stake: so, indeed, that night it was.

Gertrude watched his unremitting toil; his shifty balancing on his

footing with ever-growing amazement, but the others gave it not the

slightest heed. The engineer looked only ahead, and Glover's face

behind him never turned. Then Gertrude for the first time looked

through her own sash out into the storm.

Strain as she would, her vision could pierce to nothing beyond the

ceaseless sweep of the thin, wild snow across the brilliant flow of the

headlight. She looked into the white whirl until her eyes tired, then

back to the cab, at the flying shovel of the fireman, the peaked cap of

the muffled engineer--at Glover behind him, his hand resting now on the

reverse lever hooked high at his elbow. But some fascination drew her

eyes always back to that bright circle in the front--to the sinister

snow retreating always and always advancing; flowing always into the

headlight and out, and above it darkening into the fire that streamed

from the dripping stack. A sudden lurch nearly threw her from her

seat, and she gave a little scream as the engine righted. Glover

beside her like thought caught her outstretched hand. "A curve," he

said, bending apologetically toward her ear as she reseated herself.

"Is it very trying?"

"No, except that I am in continual fear of falling from my seat--or

having to embrace the unfortunate fireman. Oh!" she exclaimed, putting

her wrist on Glover's arm as the cab jerked.




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