"Anything else?"
"Well, there was a woman hollerin' bloody murther back o' the lumber yard, but I didn't stop to luk her up. They're allus raisin' a muss up there—it was in thim tiniments. Ye know the place." (He evidently took me for a resident or a rounder.) "Guess I'll be joggin' 'long" (here he rose to his feet), "my beat's both sides of the depot an' I daren't stop long. Good luck to ye."
"Will you drop in again?"
"Yes, maybe I will," and he opened the door and stepped out, his hand on his cap as the wind struck it.
Half an hour passed.
Then the cough of a distant locomotive, catching its breath in the teeth of the gale, followed by the rumbling of a heavily loaded train, growing louder as it approached, could be heard above the wail of the storm.
When it arrived off my window I rose from my seat and looked out through the blurred glass. The breast of the locomotive was a bank of snow, the fronts and sides of the cars were plastered with the drift. The engineer's head hung out of the cab window, his eye on the swinging signal lights. Huddling close under the lee of the last box car I caught the outline of a brakeman, his cap pulled over his ears, his jacket buttoned tight. The train passed without stopping, the cough of the engine growing fainter and fainter as it was lost in the whirl of the gale. I regained my seat, lighted another cigar and picked up my proofs again.
Another half hour passed. The world began to awake.
First came the clerk with a cheery nod; then the man who had brought in the wood and who walked straight toward the pile to see how much of it was left and whether I needed any more; then the lone passenger who had gone to the hotel and who was filled to the bursting point with profanity, and who emitted it in blue streaks of swear-words because of his accommodations; and last the policeman, beating his chest like a gorilla, the snow flying in every direction.