Some one shook him by the shoulder. He looked up and saw the conductor; in the background a lady and gentleman waiting to sit down. The car was full of people. "Come, sir," said the conductor, "you're a pretty big man, but you didn't pay for more than one seat, I reckon. You've been sleeping-here for more than a hundred miles; if you want to sleep any more I expect you'd better get out and go to an hotel." Bressant removed his feet from the extra seat, and, the conductor having reversed it, the lady and gentleman took their places. As for the boy with the green bag and the blue-spotted handkerchief, he was nowhere to be seen; he must have left the train at a previous station. The train had stopped, and Bressant, glancing out of the window, saw that they were at some large railway-junction. "How far are we from New York?" he asked of the conductor, with his hand to his ear to catch the reply. "Be there in two hours," shouted back that gentleman, in reply. "When does the next train go through here in the opposite direction?" "We're just awaiting for one to come along and give us the track--and there she is now," returned the conductor, as he took his departure. The whistle screamed malevolently, and, with a jerk and a rattle, the car began to move off. Bressant rose suddenly from his seat, walked quickly along the aisle to the door, passed through to the platform, grasped the iron balustrade with one hand, and swung himself lightly to the ground. The whistle screamed again like a disappointed fiend. "Guess that young man was up late last night," remarked the conductor to the brakeman; "a powerful sound sleep he was in, anyhow." "Off on a spree to New York, most like," responded the brakeman, tightening his dirty-brown tippet around his neck, "and thought better of it at the last minute." CHAPTER XXXIII. TILL THE ELEVENTH HOUR. Her fruitless call for Bressant seemed quite to exhaust Sophie. For a long time afterward she hardly opened her mouth, except to swallow some hot black coffee. The professor sat, for the most part, with his finger on her pulse, his eyes looking more hollow and his forehead more deeply lined than ever before, but with no other signs of anxiety or suffering. Cornelia came in and out--a restless spirit. She awaited Sophie's recovery with no less of dread than of hope. Her life hung, as it were, upon her sister's. The moment in which Sophie recovered her faculties enough to think and speak would be the last that Cornelia could maintain her mask of honor and respectability, for Cornelia knew that Sophie was in possession of her secret; she had been up in her room, and the open window had told the story.