“If she would only take some interest in her household affairs, but she leaves everything to Neoka, who is poorly fitted for such responsibility. I might send for her mother—�
Mark shook his head. “I am afraid her mother gives too much credence to this wretched fallacy that is making all the trouble,� he said.
“Well,� groaned Nathan, “I’m to blame for all this! If I had never brought that man Russell into the neighborhood this need never have happened.�
“Possibly not, but you don’t know. The Devil usually has some way of finding victims. He might have sent along some other of his emissaries. I suppose he has plenty, even of this kind. But I will think about this and see if I cannot find some way of deliverance.�
“Heaven grant you may, and soon!�
“I’ve often wondered,� said Mark, “why you ever had anything to do with this belief. I always supposed you too sound a man to be deceived easily, and yet you have half seemed to accept the doctrine.�
“I never told you of an experience I had, a number of years ago, while I was railroading, did I? You know I ran on the road three or four years. At the time the incident happened I was acting as conductor on a freight train running between R—— and Council Bluffs. I had a friend, George Marvin, who was also a railroad man, and we were close chums. He was a splendid fellow and supported a widowed mother, who idolized him.
“One day he came down to the station and told me he had had a bad dream the night before, and felt sure that if he went out upon his run he’d meet with an accident. I pooh-poohed at him, but he was terribly depressed and insisted that he’d had a warning and must not go. So finally we hunted one of the boys to go in his place, and he jumped on a passing train to ride up to the street-crossing near his home, standing on the step of the third car from the engine. As the train moved out between the tracks upon which other cars were standing, George leaned out too far, was struck by some projection from a freight car, knocked under the wheels, and killed instantly.
“It was a terrible thing. I couldn’t sleep for nights after it happened. And his poor mother—well, she never got over it. It killed her inside of six weeks.
“Two or three weeks after George was killed I took a freight train up to the junction, where I was ordered to side-track and wait for the express to pass me. I was some behind time, owing to an accident up the road, when I pulled out onto the switch, and I was slowing up to stop, when the rear door of the caboose was thrown open with a bang, and if you’ll believe me, there stood George Marvin, as natural as life.