An ordinary freight train passed, but the locomotive, as it emerged from the flat hillside and traversed the broad notch, let off a stream of white puffs from its whistle, and then disappeared behind the other hill, precisely like an episode on the stage. In a moment the white puffs translated themselves from a sight in the eye to a sound in the ear. And I tell the truth when I say that they reproduced, with a mimicry that was startling, the notes of the last two bars of “Annie Laurie.” “What do you make of that!” Gordon turned and exulted to me over his odd little discovery. “How did you get on to it?” “Oh, stumbled across it the first evening we were here. It goes every day at this time, as regular as clock-work.” “Some engineer with a sense of humor amusing himself,” I conjectured. “But regularity isn’t amusement. He blows it every day at this time. And always in the same way.” I tried another hypothesis. “A code signal of some sort, most likely.” “But what an odd code! What a poetic code, for a railroad!” “Well, I’ve learned to expect a good deal of life in Virginia. It seems to be different here.” “Yes, it’s a code.... Of course it’s a code!” Gordon amended himself. “But—I wonder if it’s a railroad code?” “I see. A lover and his lass, eh? You’re crediting your railroad engineer with your own romantic soul, Gordon.” I patted his arm, as Jemima, our cook, rang her bell for supper. “Now there’s a code that I can understand!” And we hurried in to the table. By next evening the whole gang had heard of the curious signal from the freight locomotive and assembled at the opening of the trees to hear it. Precisely at the moment due the obedient freight train crossed the notch in the distant hills, and as precisely as before the engine let off its string of puffs that in a moment became in our ears those last two bars of the song. There were as many theories to account for it as there were men to hear it. In the end the congress bore down Gordon and pronounced it a simple railroad code, with the longs and shorts accidentally resembling the tune, or made so by a whimsical engineer. Nevertheless the phenomenon was interesting enough to compel a bit of discussion about the fire in the great hall after we had despatched our supper. The talk drifted away into the curious tricks that artisans come to play with their implements—carpenters able to toss up edged tools and catch them deftly, and the like. But Gordon was not to be weaned from the subject of that whistle. “There’s nothing to prevent that engineer from playing ‘Yankee Doodle’ on his whistle if he wants to. Haven’t you often lain awake at night listening to the blasts of the locomotives? You can tell when an engineer is ruffled, when he starts behind time out of the yard, and knows he must be extra alert that night. His toot is sharp and impatient. Or you can tell an engineer coming home from his run. His whistle fairly sighs his own contentment.”