McGuire cast one sweeping glance over Plainfield, and turning to the brakeman, asked: “Where’s the station?” For answer the brakeman gave the operator a withering look, and then putting his gloved hand upon the little board shanty that stood beside the track, said: “Johnny, you mus’ be goin’ bline! here’s yer station, see? right here.” At that moment the train pulled out, and when the station agent had glanced up and down the track and out over the plain on either side, he realized that the brakeman had told the truth, for, if we except the windmill and the water tank, this was the only “improvement” at Plainfield. Down the track he could see the rear end of the departing train, contracting and sinking nearer and nearer to earth. Faint and far away came the roar of wheels, and even as he looked, the last car dropped below the line of the horizon, the sound ceased, and he listened for other sounds, but there were none. He looked longingly to see some living thing, but there was neither bird nor beast in sight. He glanced along the level plain that lay cold and gray at the end of autumn, but there was not a living, moving thing upon the earth, not even a snake or horned toad. A timid man would have been helpless with fear, but young McGuire was one of those rare beings who never knew that feeling in the least. What impressed him now was the unutterable dreariness of the place. His whole being was filled with a sense of loneliness, hitherto unknown to him. Seated upon one of the boxes, he was gazing at the ground, when, to his great relief, a little brown animal with dark stripes down its back came from under the shanty, sat on the end of a tie, and looked at him. It was no larger than a small rat, but it lived and moved, and it was welcome. Now, if this thing could live in this desert alone, a man ought to exist, and the operator took heart. Fishing a key from his pocket that had a tag upon which was written “Plainfield,” he unlocked the big padlock and pushed the door open. As he did so he noticed that the door, which was also “filled,” and thick like the door of a refrigerator car, was full of holes. Walking ’round the house he found that the outer walls were perforated. The holes, he reasoned, must have been made by things. He remembered that the superintendent of telegraph had said that the sand was put between the walls “to keep out the cold--and things.” Coming round to the door again he went in. The place had been occupied before. There was a chair and a table and some twisted wire, but the telegraph instrument had been taken away. A small coal stove, red with rust, stood on the floor. The floor was also rusty. No, it was not rust; it was blood. So the agent, too, had been taken away. McGuire examined the walls, and noticed with a feeling of satisfaction that none of the things had penetrated the inner boards.