a distrust of those much-used affairs--I prepared to wait gradually
for sleep.

But sleep did not visit me. The train came to frequent, grating
stops, and I surmised the hot box again. I am not a nervous man,
but there was something chilling in the thought of the second section
pounding along behind us. Once, as I was dozing, our locomotive
whistled a shrill warning--"You keep back where you belong," it
screamed to my drowsy ears, and from somewhere behind came a
chastened "All-right-I-will."

I grew more and more wide-awake. At Cresson I got up on my elbow
and blinked out at the station lights. Some passengers boarded the
train there and I heard a woman's low tones, a southern voice, rich
and full. Then quiet again. Every nerve was tense: time passed,
perhaps ten minutes, possibly half an hour. Then, without the
slightest warning, as the train rounded a curve, a heavy body was
thrown into my berth. The incident, trivial as it seemed, was
startling in its suddenness, for although my ears were painfully
strained and awake, I had heard no step outside. The next instant
the curtain hung limp again; still without a sound, my disturber
had slipped away into the gloom and darkness. In a frenzy of
wakefulness, I sat up, drew on a pair of slippers and fumbled for
my bath-robe.

From a berth across, probably lower ten, came that particular
aggravating snore which begins lightly, delicately, faintly soprano,
goes down the scale a note with every breath, and, after keeping the
listener tense with expectation, ends with an explosion that tears
the very air. I was more and more irritable: I sat on the edge