One of the men brushed the hair back from the cold forehead, and the brakeman closed his eyes and was quiet for a time. Then the wind whirled around the depot and banged the blinds on the window of his room, and he lifted his hand and cried out:
"Jack-son! Passengers going north by the Saginaw Road change cars!"
The men understood. The brakeman thought he was coming east on the Michigan Central. The effort seemed to have greatly exhausted him, for he lay like one dead for the next five minutes, and a watcher felt for his pulse to see if life had not gone out. A tug going down the river sounded her whistle loud and long, and the dying brakeman opened his eyes and called out:
"Ann Arbor!"
He had been over the road a thousand times, but had made his last trip. Death was drawing a spectral train over the old track, and he was brakeman, engineer, and conductor.
One of the yard-engines uttered a shrill whistle of warning, as if the glare of the headlight had shown to the engineer some stranger in peril, and the brakeman called out:
"Yp-silanti! Change cars here for the Eel River Road!"
"He's coming in fast," whispered one of the men.
"And the end of his 'run' will be the end of his life," said a second.
The dampness of death began to collect on the patient's forehead, and there was that ghastly look on the face that death always brings. The slamming of a door down the hall startled him again, and he moved his head and faintly said: