Argosy All-Story Weekly — page 164: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

954 rods away. Taking her coat from the closet, Edna put it on, opened the window and Jeaped out into the night. VI. EpNa ran through the grove to the road and fled along the dark highway, running until out of breath, and then walking swift- ly. She hastened on with many an uneasy glance behind and before her and to either side into the vague November fields. Un- reasoning terror gripped her at sight of straggling cattle in cornstalks or the flat bulk of a strawstack against the stubble, and she started in alarm at the barking of a dog in the night. She saw no human creature until she came to the Roberts’ home halfway te the siding. There was a light near the road. Old Roberts was stooped over his gate. But he did not look in her direction as he straightened up and hobbled toward the house with his lantern. Edna continued on with rapid pace, drawing her coat more tightly about her, not alone for secrecy, but for protection from the wind that screamed its threat of rain and snow from lowering skies. In less than an hour from leaving the house, she was at the siding, her heart ~ thumping with her haste and excitement. She shivered at sight of the water tank rising faint and sinister in the dark- ness. She trembled anew with fright as she glimpsed figures near the tower and heard the low mutter of voices, recalling stories of terrible outrages committed by tramps on people in this lonely place. She stole into the little waiting room, an old freight car made into the semblance of astation. In a corner a man leaned over a table writing, while a telegraph instrument pounded beside a feeble lamp. With a sense of relief Edna closed the door and sat down to wait. The telegrapher did not know her, indeed, he had not lifted his head to look at her. She was in no peril of discovery through him while his presence was protection from the tramps. Suddenly it came to her that she had no ticket. She was about to rise and accost the man, then ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY. decided to leave the detail of her fare to Walter. | There was a roar outside and the passen- ger train was almost beside the station be- fore Edna could get out upon the platform. It slowed down and stopped with a grind of brakes as a portly man in conductor’s uni- form descended, swinging a lantern. The girl took a hurried step toward the en- trance to the nearest car for the pause here was short and she did not want to expose herself to the view of anybody who might recognize her. She stopped, still a few feet from the station door, her heart terrifically pound- ing. Three men were furtively slouching from behind the water tank toward the baggage car just abreast of them. Their forms were indistinct in Edna’s vision, but the dim outline of one even in the darkness smote her with inescapable familiarity. The two other men disappeared, but he did not move. Rays from the trainman’s lamp fell on him, a slight person in a workingman’s shirt and overalls and a high-crowned hat. Her fascinated eyes took in his frame, his bearing, his features. A scream choked in her throat. The man was Harry Allerman! Had he learned of her flight and come to stop her? The bell clanged, the whistle sounded and the conductor shouted: “ All aboard! All aboard!” For a moment Harry turned his face from the cars toward the dark of dismal, lonely country as toward a mourned, forsaken shrine. Something in the melancholy pro- file, clear in the lantern’s flame, carried Edna back to hazy autumn afternoons when time on time she had seen his wist- ful, brooding stare bent upon a departing train, bent, she knew now, upon an old lost life of wandering that had claimed him for its own at last. Edna saw Harry Allerman face about and swing stealthily out of the light into the darkness between the coaches. Dazed, the girl stood there heedless of the final “ All aboard.” The conductor, with his telltale lantern, disappeared. The cars began to move and the tramp was gone. oO CoOMmiclboOoks CO