Tolliver glanced from the rear window towards his home, smothered in the night and the storm. If he might only run there quickly to make sure that Sally was all right! The sounder jarred furiously. Tolliver half raised his hand, as if to destroy it. It was the division superintendent himself at the key. "NT. NT. NT. Is it storming bad with you?" "Pretty thick." "Then keep the fuses burning. For God's sake, don't let the first in over-run his switch. And clear the line like lightning. Those fellows are driving faster than hell." Tolliver's mouth opened, but no sound came. His face assumed the expression of one who undergoes the application of some destructive barbarity. "I get afraid when you leave me alone this way at night." He visualized his wife, beautiful, dark, and desirable, urging him not to go to the tower. A gust of wind sprang through the trap door. The yellow slips fluttered. He ran to the trap. He heard the lower door bang shut. Someone was on the stairs, climbing with difficulty, breathing hard. A hat, crusted with snow, appeared. There came slowly into the light Joe's face, ugly and inflamed; the eyes restless with a grave indecision. Tolliver's first elation died in new uncertainty. "Where you been?" he demanded fiercely. Joe struggled higher until he sat on the flooring, his legs dangling through the trap. He laughed in an ugly and unnatural note; and Tolliver saw that there was more than drink, more than sleeplessness, recorded in his scarlet face. Hatred was there. It escaped, too, from the streaked eyes that looked at Tolliver as if through a veil. He spoke thickly. "Don't you wish you knew?" Tolliver stooped, grasping the man's shoulders. In each fist he clenched bunches of wet cloth. In a sort of desperation he commenced to shake the bundled figure. "You tell me where you been----" "NT. NT. NT." Joe leered. "Joe! You got to tell me where you been." The pounding took Tolliver's strength. He crouched lower in an effort to avoid it, but each blow struck as hard as before, forcing into his brain word after word that he passionately resented. Places, hours, minutes--the details of this vital passage of two trains in the unfriendly night. "Switch whichever arrives first, and hold until the other is through." It was difficult to understand clearly, because Joe's laughter persisted, crashing against Tolliver's brain as brutally as the sounder. "You got to tell me if you been bothering Sally." The hatred and the cunning of the mottled face grew. "Why don't you ask Sally?" Slowly Tolliver let the damp cloth slip from his fingers. He straightened, facing more definitely that abominable choice. He glanced at his cap and overcoat. The lazy clock hands reminded him that he had remained in the tower nearly half an hour beyond his time. Joe was right. It was clear he could satisfy himself only by going home and asking Sally. "Get up," he directed. "I guess you got sense enough to know you're on duty."