A berth blanket fastened between Gertrude and the side window and a cushion on the box made her comfortable. Under her feet lay a second blanket. She had come in with a smile, but the gloom of the cab gave no light to a smile. Only the gauge faces high above her showed the flash of the bull's-eyes, and the multitude of sounds overawed her. On the opposite side she could see the engineer, padded snug in a blouse, his head bullet-tight under a cap, the long visor hanging beak-like over his nose. His chin was swathed in a roll of neck-cloth, and his eyes, whether he hooked the long lever at his side or stretched both his arms to latch the throttle, she could never see. Then, or when his hand fell back to the handle of the air, as it always fell, his profile was silent. If she tried to catch his face he was looking always, statue-like, ahead. Standing behind him, Glover, with a hand on a roof-brace, steadied himself. In spite of the comforts he had arranged for her, Gertrude, in her corner, felt a lonely sense of being in the way. In her father's car there was never lacking the waiting deference of trainmen; in the cab the men did not even see her. In the seclusion of the car a storm hardly made itself felt; in the cab she seemed under the open sky. The wind buffeted the glass at her side, rattled in its teeth the door in front of her, drank the steaming flame from the stack monstrously, and dashed the cinders upon the thin roof above her head with terrifying force. With the gathering speed of the engine the cracking exhaust ran into a confusing din that deafened her, and she was shaken and jolted. The plunging of the cab grew violent, and with every lurch her cushion shifted alarmingly. She resented Glover's placing himself so far away, and could not see that he even looked toward her. The furnace door slammed until she thought the fireman must have thrown in coal enough to last till morning, but unable to realize the danger of overloading the fire he stopped only long enough to turn various valve-wheels about her feet, and with his back bent resumed his hammering and shovelling as if his very salvation were at stake: so, indeed, that night it was. Gertrude watched his unremitting toil; his shifty balancing on his footing with ever-growing amazement, but the others gave it not the slightest heed. The engineer looked only ahead, and Glover's face behind him never turned. Then Gertrude for the first time looked through her own sash out into the storm.