The citizen who observed the intense blackness of the night comes to his window again, and notes the steady falling of the rain, and in his reverie pretends to regret that it is not possible for the water to come up until his house will float away like an ark, that he may get rid of living in a place where the nights are so dark and wet that he cannot sleep for thinking of them. When he returns to his chair, and attempts to read, the pattering rain is so persistent on the roof and at the windows that the possibility of a flood occurs to his mind, and he thinks with satisfaction that, should it come to pass, Davy's Bend would at last be as well off as Ben's City; and this possibility is so pleasant that he puts out his light, the only one showing in the town, and goes to bed. At the foot of a long street, so close to the river that its single light casts a ghastly glare into the water, stands the railroad station, where the agent awaits the arrival of the single train that visits the place daily,--for only a few people want to go to Davy's Bend, and not many are left to move away,--so the agent mutters at the rain and the darkness, and growls at the hard fate that keeps him up so late; for, of all the inhabitants of the place, he is the only one who has business to call him out at night. There are no people in Davy's Bend who are overworked, or whose business cares are so great as to make them nervous or fretful; so they sleep and yawn a great deal, and have plenty of time in which to tell how dull their own place is, and how distressingly active is Ben's City, located in the country below them, and which is admired even by the river, for it is always going in that direction. Fortunately, on this misty night the agent has not long to wait; for just as he curls himself up in his chair to rest comfortably, certain that the train will be late, there is a hoarse blast from a steam whistle up the road, which echoes through the woods and over the hills with a dismal roar, and by the time he has seized his lantern, and reached the outside, the engine bell is ringing softly in the yard; the headlight appears like a great eye spying out the dark places around the building, and before he has had time to look about him, or express his surprise that the wheels are on time, a few packages have been unloaded, and the train creeps out into the darkness, hurrying away from Davy's Bend, like the river and the people.