“Hear what?”
“See that notch between those two hills about a mile and a half away over there?” He pointed. “Keep your eye on that.”
“A blast?”
“Yes, a blast. But not the kind you think. Just watch.”
We smoked in silence, and my curiosity was about to break into speech again, or ebb altogether, when it happened.
An ordinary freight train passed, but the locomotive, as it emerged from the flat hillside and traversed the broad notch, let off a stream of white puffs from its whistle, and then disappeared behind the other hill, precisely like an episode on the stage.
In a moment the white puffs translated themselves from a sight in the eye to a sound in the ear. And I tell the truth when I say that they reproduced, with a mimicry that was startling, the notes of the last two bars of “Annie Laurie.”
“What do you make of that!” Gordon turned and exulted to me over his odd little discovery.
“How did you get on to it?”
“Oh, stumbled across it the first evening we were here. It goes every day at this time, as regular as clock-work.”