"Um. That's too bad. You just missed a good train." He turned to the telephone. "Gimme the station. Yea-uh. That's right." Henrietta would be there. "When's the next through train east, Chuck? Huh? No, the next one." He spit his words out of the corner of his mouth toward the receiver. "Any word of that out of Chicago yet? Well, say, I got a lady here got to get to New York on it. Got to, I said. You got any berths here? Well, you could wire for one, couldn't you? What you hired for?" He hung up the earpiece. "He says there's trouble west of here. Snow. That seven o'clock just went through, late. He's gonna let me know about the midnight." "I'd better go to the station." "What for? You stay here where it's comfortable. You go up to your room and I'll let you know. I'm on till midnight." "Just go up and wait?" Catherine was piteous. "Yes, ma'am. I'll take care of you. Now don't you go worrying. I always tell my wife she'd have the grass growing over all of us if worry could do it. That's the woman of it, I suppose." "You're very kind." Catherine was reluctant to leave him. He was a sort of bulwark between her and the rush of dark fear. "I ought to wire them----" "Sure. Here, write it out. It stands in reason he needn't be hurt much, and still he'd want his mother." Catherine's pencil wobbled in her stiff fingers. Spencer would want her. All day he had wanted her. Hours between them---- "Will take first train." She looked up, her lip quivering. "I wouldn't have time for an answer, would I?" "You ought not to, if that train's anywhere near on time, and if there's a berth left on it." The clerk turned away, to fish cigars out of his counter for a man who stood waiting, one hand plying a busy toothpick. "D'yuh hear anything about the blizzard down Chicago way?" the man asked. "Say it's put kinks in the train service." "You always hear worse than happens." The clerk's glance at Catherine was anxious. But she signed her name to the message and wrote out the address. V The midnight express for New York, coming through three hours late, did not stop. The clerk came up to Catherine's door to tell her. "They ain't an empty berth on her," he said. "Took off several coaches to lighten her for the drifts." "What am I going to do?" Catherine asked. "There's a local in the morning. You could get something out of Pittsburgh, if you got that far."