Twenty minutes, twenty-five minutes. Perhaps there would be a doctor on the train. Hervey had always laughed at the first aid scouts and had called their bandage work bunk. But this scout without any jack-knife or matches did not laugh now. He was not a boy of strong imagination, but all these horrifying, crowding thoughts aroused him to a state of panic and he yelled frantically again and again till his voice failed him and he went to pieces completely and sobbed in bewilderment and ghastly fright as the precious half hour closed up relentlessly, just as the switch had closed. Another five or ten minutes elapsed; anything might happen now. He tried to steel himself for the inevitable. But Hervey was not sublimely courageous; the serenity of the hero dwelt not in him. He was just a daredevil. At Temple Camp they understood this perfectly. He did reckless things and got away with them. He was all right as long as there was a spectacular though perilous way out. But he had not that bravery of character which faces danger serenely. Still I wish to give him full credit as we follow him in the winding and sometimes dubious trail of his career. I like him so much that it is agreeable to record that in those tense moments, when grim death was upon him, a gentle thought entered his scatter-brain. It came in the last few precious moments. He wondered whether in a little while, “all of a sudden” as his thoughts phrased it, he would see his own mother face to face. Then, as if in answer, the modulated roar of an oncoming train broke the stillness. Louder and louder grew the sound until it ceased to be a distant part of the night chorus and came out bold and strong for what it was, the voice of a thundering, heedless, steel monster, crying down the myriad sounds of the woodland with its alien, metallic clamor. On, on, on it came and a patch of mellow brightness appeared as the headlight came in view around a turn to the north and bore swiftly down upon him. And Hervey Willetts stood and faced it. He called, but he knew that no one would hear amid all that clank and clamor. There was a bare possibility that the engineer might see him, but if so he would do no more than blow the whistle. Should he lie down? Then, if seen, he might be thought to be dead or unconscious and the train would be stopped. A forlorn hope. And he could not lie down without breaking his ankle. So, trembling in every nerve, his heart beating like a sledge-hammer, he stood and faced the approaching light. He keyed himself to do it as a stunt--as if he had been dared to do it. There was pathos in the rakish angle of his outlandish hat, which usually bore a suggestion of bizarre defiance. On, on, on came the thundering locomotive, painting the rails silver with its blazing light, setting the ties in bold relief so that they seemed like rungs of a great ladder.