“Please pass the salt,” interposed Griswold.
The Mississippian enjoyed the sound of his own voice, which boomed out above the noise of the train with broad effects of dialect that these types will not be asked to reproduce. Griswold’s eyes had again met those of the girl opposite, and there was, he felt, a look of appeal in them. The discussion distressed her, just as the telegrams from New Orleans in the afternoon papers had distressed her, and Griswold began at once to entertain his table companions with his views on a number of national political issues, that were as vital to Arizona or Wyoming as to the Carolinas. He told stories to illustrate his points, and told them so well that his three companions forgot the estrangement of the belligerent governors.
Griswold ran on in the low, musical voice that distinguishes the cultivated Virginian in any company anywhere in the world, and the noisy loquacity of the Mississippian went down before him. He was so intent on holding their attention that his dishes were taken from him almost untouched. The others lingered until his coffee was brought. He was so absorbed that he failed to see the smile that occasionally passed over the girl’s face as some fragment of one of his stories found its way to her. He had undertaken to deflect the talk from a channel which had, it seemed, some painful association for her, but he had done more in unwittingly diverting her own thoughts by his droll humour. He did not cease until she had left the car, whereupon he followed his trio of auditors to the smoking compartment, and there suffered the Mississippian to hold uninterrupted sway.
When he went back into the car at eleven o’clock he found the girl and her maid still sitting in their sections, though most of the other berths, including his own, had been made up. The train was slowing down, and wishing a breath of air before retiring, he went to the rear platform of the sleeper, which was the last car of the train. The porter had opened the door in the vestibule to allow the brakeman to run back with his torpedoes. The baggage car had developed a hot box, and jumping out, Griswold saw lanterns flashing ahead where the trainmen laboured with the sick wheel. The porter vanished, leaving Griswold alone. The train had stopped at the edge of a small town, whose scattered houses lay darkly against the hills beyond. The platform lamps of a station shone a quarter of a mile ahead. The feverish steel yielded reluctantly to treatment, and Griswold went forward and watched the men at work for a few minutes, then returned to the end of the train. He swung himself into the vestibule and leaned upon the guard rail, gazing down the track toward the brakeman’s lantern. Then he grew impatient at the continued delay and dropped down again, pacing back and forth in the road-bed behind the becalmed train. The night was overcast, with hints of rain in the air, and a little way from the rear lights it was pitch dark. Griswold felt sure that the train would not leave without the brakeman, and he was further reassured by the lanterns of the trainmen beside the baggage car. Suddenly, as he reached the car and turned to retrace his steps, a man sprang up, seemingly from nowhere, and accosted him.
“I reckon y’u’re the gov’nor, ain’t y’u?”
“Yes, certainly, my man. What can I do for you?” replied Griswold instantly.
“I reckoned it was y’u when y’u fust come out on the platform. I’m app’inted to tell y’u, Gov’nor, that if y’u have Bill Appleweight arrested in South Car’lina, y’u’ll get something one of these days y’u won’t like. And if y’u try to find me y’u’ll get it quicker. Good-night, Gov’nor.”
“Good-night!” stammered Griswold.
The least irony had crept into the word governor as the man uttered it and slipped away into the darkness. The shadows swallowed him up; the frogs in the ditch beside the track chanted dolorously; then the locomotive whistled for the brakeman, whose lantern was already bobbing toward the train.
As Griswold swung himself into the vestibule the girl who had borrowed his newspapers turned away hurriedly and walked swiftly before him to her section. The porter, who was gathering her things together, said, as she paused in the aisle by her seat,—