After looking for a time at the sinister lights, we re-crossed the railroad track. As we stepped up to the platform, two figures coming in the opposite direction rounded the rear car and, crossing the rails, moved away towards the illuminated region. I heard their voices; they were the red haired woman and the man who had met her at the train. Was she a new arrival? I think not, for she seemed to know the man, and she had, somehow, the air of getting home. Was she an "inmate" of one of the establishments? Again I think not, for, with her look of hardness, there was also one of capability, and more than any one thing it is laziness and lack of capability which cause sane women to give up freedom for such "homes." No; I think the woman from the train was a proprietor who had been away on a vacation, or perhaps a "business trip." Suppose that to be true. Suppose that she had been away for several weeks. What was her feeling at seeing, again, the crimson beacon in her own window? What must it be like to get home, when home is such a place? Could one's mental attitude become so warped that one might actually look forward to returning--to being greeted by the "family"? Could it be that, at sight of that red light, flaring over there across the tracks, one might heave a happy sigh and say to oneself: "Ah! Home again at last! There's no place like home"--? * * * * * One thing the Western Pacific Railroad does that every railroad should do. It publishes a pamphlet, containing a relief map of its system, and a paragraph or two about every station on the line, giving the history of the place (if it has any), telling the altitude, the distance from terminal points, and how the town got its name. From this pamphlet I judge that some one who had to do with the building of the Western Pacific Railroad, or at least with the naming of stations on the line, possessed a pleasantly catholic literary taste. Gaskell, Nevada, one stopping place, is named for the author of "Cranford"; Brontë, in the same State, for Charlotte Brontë; Poe, in California, for Edgar Allan Poe; Twain for Mark Twain; Harte for Bret Harte, and Mabie for Hamilton Wright Mabie. Other stations are named for British Field Marshals, German scientists, American politicians and financiers, and for old settlers, ranches, and landmarks. Had there not been washouts on the line shortly before we journeyed over it, I might not have known so much about this little pamphlet, but during the night, when I could not sleep because of the violent rocking of the car, I read it with great care. Thus it happened that when, towards morning, we stopped, and I raised my curtain to find the ground covered with a blanket of snow, I was able to establish myself as being in the Sierras, somewhere in the region of the Beckwith Pass--which, by the way, is by two thousand feet, the lowest pass used by any railroad entering the State of California.