"Mother!" I began, in a frightened way; and it flashed over me how if she was going to die it would be my fault for grieving her so. But before I could say another word, the sound came again; and I saw her eyes staring, and her hand pointing at something —something down below, on the line, nearer the station.
Quick as lightning I turned my eyes down there, and saw the whole! Folks say moments are all of the same length. I don't know. It don't seem to me they can be. For that next moment was the longest I ever lived through in my life. It stretched out and out in an awful way; and yet it couldn't have been more than a moment. If it had been, things would have ended different. There would have been time, which there wasn't.
There's a danger to men always, near and about the line, which outside folks don't understand. They're always within hearing of trains, and they get so used to the sound that at last they don't hear it, hardly. If they are not on the watch, a train might rush by within a few yards, and they wouldn't notice the stir. It's natural, seeing we get used to pretty near everything which we have always in everyday life; but it means danger. Many a poor fellow has been maimed, or even killed, just through being overmuch accustomed to the station sounds, and so not hearing the train that was bearing down upon him.
"I saw her staring and her hand pointing at something on the line."
Father was careful commonly, knowing the danger, which he'd sometimes spoken about. But it's hard for a man to be always on the alert, and that day in particular—ah me!—he had his mind full of something else.
When I looked, I saw all in an instant. I saw, too, that there was nothing for me to do.
A train was coming along the curve from behind us towards the station—one of the fast trains that didn't stop, but ran through.
Father was down on the line, just outside the station, calling out something to a man at a little distance from him, on the other side. Father's back was turned to us; and just before I saw him, he had stepped unthinkingly back upon the rails, along which the train was coming.
He only had to step forward again, and he was all right. But that was just what he didn't think of doing.