platform; the ticking of telegraph instruments came to her anxious
ears, however, and she knew there were living people inside the long,
low building. The experience certainly was new to this tall, carefully
nurtured girl. Never before had she been left alone at such an hour
and place; it goes without saying that the circumstances were unique.
Here she was, standing alone in the most wretched of nights, her heart
throbbing with a dozen emotions, her eyes and ears labouring in a new
and thrilling enterprise, her whole life poised on the social dividing
line. She was running away to marry the man she had loved for years;
slipping away from the knot that ambition was trying to throw over her
rebellious head. If she had any thought of the past or the future,
however, it was lost among the fears and anxieties of the present. Her
soul was crying out for the approach of two objects--Joe Dauntless and
the north-bound flyer.

Her sharp ears caught the sound which told her that the motor had
stopped down the street; it was a welcome sound, for it meant that he
was racing back to the station--and just in time, too; the flyer was
pounding the rails less than half a mile away.

Fenlock was a division point in the railroad. The company's yards and
the train despatcher's office were located there. A huge round-house
stood off to the right; half a dozen big headlights glared out at the
shivering Eleanor like so many spying, accusing eyes. She knew that
all trains stopped in Fenlock. Joe had told her that the flyer's pause
was the briefest of any during the day or night; still she wondered if
it would go thundering through and spoil everything.

Miss Thursdale, watching the approaching headlight, her ears filled
with the din of the wheels, did not see or hear a second motor car