The startling episode of the attack of the dog had not sufficed to distract Colonel Livingston's regard from his manifest duty as guide, philosopher and friend to all the incarcerated wayfarers. He was too old a campaigner for that. After the confusion had ceased and comment on the stirring incident had died away, he looked about in austere contemplation. His eyes rested upon the Conductor and Porter, who were discussing something together at the end of the car. He acted promptly. "Here," he called out, cheerfully but imperatively, "if you think that this train crew has but one sort of responsibility just now, you are mistaken. Passengers must, under the circumstances, have even more attention than usual. They must be entertained. You must each tell a story. Mr. Conductor, I call upon you first." The conductor was mightily embarrassed. Evidently story-telling was not his specialty. Recognizing, however, the fact that there was nothing for him but submission to the inflexible Colonel, he succumbed, red in the face and twisting nervously his short mustache. "I'm not much at telling anything," he managed to explain, "and don't believe I have any story of my own that would be worth while, but I never hear the whistle cut loose that I don't think of what a man I met in San Francisco told me of what has been going on in one of the big cities, and may be going on yet for all I know. I haven't been East of Denver for a long time--that's the end of my run--and, it seems to me, that, if what he told me is true, I'd have seen something about it in the newspapers. Maybe not, though; they miss lots of things. Anyhow, this is what he told me--and I'll try to tell it just as he did, even using some of his big words, about what has been happening with a kind of big whistle to help sailors which they call, THE SIREN Half a mile off shore, an adjunct of the light-house, was the Siren, friend of mariners and enemy of all the rest of mankind. When the fog came upon the face of the waters and steamers and sailing vessels, creeping fearfully about in all directions, were in danger of collision, with resultant horrors, and shrieked out their apprehensions in strident whistlings, the Siren responded through the opaque waste with a warning howl, telling each seaman where he was and where was safety and where was death. It was a howl of the pitch and key best adapted for reaching a great distance and served its purpose well, yet it was doleful as a sound from the tomb or the wail of a lost soul with a bass voice. But little cared the fog-fretted captains or their crews or passengers for the lugubriousness of the Siren's call. As long as the notes of the misnamed fog-horn indicated the path to safety they cared nothing for the quality of the note.