No sleeping corpses here sprawled over seats, with arms and legs thrust up; no mothers watched their children; no half-frozen travellers shivered beside ice-cold heaters. The car was warm, the lights burned cheerily, the seats were unlocked and faced both ways. Not many passengers either--only six besides myself at my end. Three of them were wearing picture hats the size of tea-trays, short skirts, and high shoes with red heels. The other three wore Derbies and the unmistakable garb of the average drummer. Each couple had a double seat all to themselves, and all six were shouting with laughter. Packed in the other end of the car were the usual collection of travellers seen on an owl train. I passed on toward the middle of the coach, turned a seat, and proceeded to camp for the night. The overcoat did service now as a seat cushion and the grip as a rest for my elbow. It soon became evident that the girls belonged to a troupe on their way to Detroit; that they had danced in Kalamazoo but a few hours before, had supped with the drummers, and had boarded the train at 2.50. As their conversation was addressed to the circumambient air, there was no difficulty in my gaining these facts. If my grave and reverend presence acted as a damper on their hilarity, there was no evidence of it in their manner. "Say, Liz," cried the girl in the pink waist, "did you catch on to the--" Here her head was tucked under the chin of the girl behind her. "Oh, cut it out, Mame!" answered Liz. "Now, George, you stop!" This with a scream at one of the drummers, whose head had been thrust close to Mame's ear in an attempt to listen. "Say, girls," broke in another--they were all talking at once--"why, them fellers in the front seat went on awful! I seen Sanders lookin' and--" "Well, what if he _did_ look? That guy ain't--" etc., etc. I began to realize now why the other passengers were packed together in the far end of the car. I broke camp and moved down their way. The train sped on. I busied myself studying the loops and curls of snow that the eddying wind was piling up in the cuts and opens, as they lay glistening under the glow of the lights streaming through the car windows; noting, too, here and there, a fence post standing alone where some curious wind-fluke had scooped clear the drifts. Soon I began to speculate on the outcome of the trip. I had at best only three hours leeway between 11.30 A.M., the schedule time of arriving in Cleveland, and 2.30 P.M., the hour of my lecture--not much in a storm like this, with every train delayed and the outlook worse every hour.