He turned on her savagely, struggling for a minute to free his hand. Then his eyes dropped. “Ye ’re a woman,” he said grimly. “Ye ’ve no call to know.”
She stroked the hand with thin, knotted fingers, but her lips made no reply.
He looked up under fierce brows. “I ’ll do to him as he ’s done to me.” He said the words with deep accent.
“No,—no”—
He swept aside the words—“He took away my engine,” he said with slow wrath—
“But ye slept, Hugh—And ye could not help the sleeping!” It was a little cry of defence.
“I’d been waking, the night and the day—and the night again,” he replied fiercely, “and I slept—Is sleepin’ a crime!—She was safe on the sidin’,” he added. “There was no harm to Her—”
She waited with bent head. So many times they had lived through the steps of his disgrace—
“An’ then he gi’e me the switch. He were kind an’ just. He gi’e me the switch to tend—” Impotent bitterness filled the words—“we—that’d drove the best engines on the road! Tendin’ a switch—in the freight yard—” His head sunk a little.
“Ye was old, Hugh.” It was the little cry again.