During a most exhilarating evening I tramped past houseless Panther and got to Cato at nightfall. Cato was a railway station of no pretensions; a broken-down shed with no door, no ticket offices, no porter. Passengers who wished to take a train had to wave a flag and trust to the eyesight of the engine-driver. For village, all that I could make out was a coal-bank, a shaft, and some heaps of old iron.
It was an extremely cold night, so I slept in the railway shed on a plank form that ran along the three sides of the building. I lay and looked out at the bright night shining over the mountains, dozed, waked, dozed again. Shortly after midnight I had a strange visitor. I was lying half-asleep, looking at a misshapen star which was resting on the mountains opposite me, which became a silver thumb pointing upward, which became at last the young crescent moon just rising. I was in that somnolent state when you ask, as you see the moon rising behind dark branches of the forest, Is it the moon in eclipse? is it a comet?—when a portly man with shovel hat came out of the night, stood in front of the shed, leaned on a thick cudgel, and looked in.
"Hallo!" said I.
"Haffing sum sleep?" queried the visitor.
"Yes, trying to; but it's a cold night."
"Ah, you haf bed pretty goot!"
"Who are you,—the night watchman?"
"Naw. You don't see a näit wawtchman without 'is lantern."
The old chap came close up to me, bent down, and whispered, "I'm in the same box as yourself."
"Walking all night?" I asked.