"If I telegraph Danger, on either side of me, or on both, I can give
no reason for it," he went on, wiping the palms of his hands. "I
should get into trouble, and do no good. They would think I was
mad. This is the way it would work,--Message: 'Danger! Take
care!' Answer: 'What Danger? Where?' Message: 'Don't know.
But, for God's sake, take care!' They would displace me. What else
could they do?"

His pain of mind was most pitiable to see. It was the mental
torture of a conscientious man, oppressed beyond endurance by an
unintelligible responsibility involving life.

"When it first stood under the Danger-light," he went on, putting
his dark hair back from his head, and drawing his hands outward
across and across his temples in an extremity of feverish distress,
"why not tell me where that accident was to happen,--if it must
happen? Why not tell me how it could be averted,--if it could have
been averted? When on its second coming it hid its face, why not
tell me, instead, 'She is going to die. Let them keep her at home'?
If it came, on those two occasions, only to show me that its
warnings were true, and so to prepare me for the third, why not warn
me plainly now? And I, Lord help me! A mere poor signal-man on
this solitary station! Why not go to somebody with credit to be
believed, and power to act?"

When I saw him in this state, I saw that for the poor man's sake, as
well as for the public safety, what I had to do for the time was to
compose his mind. Therefore, setting aside all question of reality
or unreality between us, I represented to him that whoever
thoroughly discharged his duty must do well, and that at least it