When winter came the ague went away, but it left the old man bent and pale. His cough grew worse, and finally a severe cold put him on his back with pneumonia. When the day set down by the doctor for a change, “one way or the other,” had arrived, the medical expert lost nothing by the prediction. Like the Oracle at Delphi that assured the king that his war would wreck an empire, without saying which empire, the doctor’s reputation was reasonably safe. As the day wore away the old man grew restless. At night the fever came on. At midnight he leaped from his bed, seized the lamp that stood upon the little table near him, and rushed out into the rain-swept night to show it to the driver of the Midnight Express. When the train had crashed over the cattle-guards at the road crossing, the watchman went back into the house, but refused to go to bed again. “I can’t go yet,” he said, “I must wait for the White Mail.” They sent for the doctor, and the doctor told them to send for the priest. When the dawn came the old man opened his eyes. “Me flag,” he cried, “where is me flag?” and Mrs. Connor brought a clean white flag and placed it in his hand. Now the White Mail that had come out of the east in the afternoon, crossed Indiana in the evening, and entered Illinois in the night, dropped from the great prairie into the sag at East Creek, lifted again, screamed across the ridge, and plunged down the long hill towards West Creek bridge. The old watchman, hearing the roar and the whistle, grasped his flag and darted from the door. As he reached the open air the White Mail went roaring past. A white ribbon of steam fluttered from the engine dome and floated far back along the top of the train. The old man flourished his flag, staggered, swayed, fell into the arms of his wife, and they carried him into the house again. When the priest came the old watchman was sleeping with his cold hands crossed above his breast and candles burning about his bed. CHAPTER II AGAIN THE REAPER AT the suggestion of the section boss, the agent asked the roadmaster to put Jimmie Connor on the bridge as watchman, and give little Jack, his brother, the mule and the tank. After that, instead of the bent form of the old man, the widow saw her boy coming up from the bridge of a morning when the White Mail had gone by. Everyone was kind to the boys and gave them encouragement. Conductor Wise, who went up on the Midnight Express and came down on the White Mail, sent a dog to be company for the young watchman. Charley Cope, who fired the Highland Accommodation, gave little Jack a long whip, and the foreman of the bridge gang built a platform so that he could stand, or sit in the centre of the “horse power” like the driver of a threshing machine.