“Some engineer with a sense of humor amusing himself,” I conjectured.
“But regularity isn’t amusement. He blows it every day at this time. And always in the same way.”
I tried another hypothesis. “A code signal of some sort, most likely.”
“But what an odd code! What a poetic code, for a railroad!”
“Well, I’ve learned to expect a good deal of life in Virginia. It seems to be different here.”
“Yes, it’s a code.... Of course it’s a code!” Gordon amended himself. “But—I wonder if it’s a railroad code?”
“I see. A lover and his lass, eh? You’re crediting your railroad engineer with your own romantic soul, Gordon.” I patted his arm, as Jemima, our cook, rang her bell for supper. “Now there’s a code that I can understand!” And we hurried in to the table.
By next evening the whole gang had heard of the curious signal from the freight locomotive and assembled at the opening of the trees to hear it. Precisely at the moment due the obedient freight train crossed the notch in the distant hills, and as precisely as before the engine let off its string of puffs that in a moment became in our ears those last two bars of the song.
There were as many theories to account for it as there were men to hear it. In the end the congress bore down Gordon and pronounced it a simple railroad code, with the longs and shorts accidentally resembling the tune, or made so by a whimsical engineer.
Nevertheless the phenomenon was interesting enough to compel a bit of discussion about the fire in the great hall after we had despatched our supper. The talk drifted away into the curious tricks that artisans come to play with their implements—carpenters able to toss up edged tools and catch them deftly, and the like. But Gordon was not to be weaned from the subject of that whistle.