Nay, more than that. The operator, worn out by long hours, sometimes goes to sleep beside his key. His slumber is so deep that the roar of passing trains does not disturb it, nor the clicking of his sounder, as messages flash over the wire. But let his call be sounded, that short and insistent combination of dots and dashes which means his office--a single letter usually--and he will start awake. The ear has caught the call, has sent it into the brain, and some second-self there rouses the sleeper and tells him he is wanted. Operators are not supposed to go to sleep on duty; to be caught asleep means a "lay-off," if not dismissal. Yet they _do_ go to sleep, for the long hours of the night pass slowly, and there are times when the weary eyes refuse to remain open. If it were not for the little monitor within which stays awake, on guard, listening for its call, accidents on the rail would be of much more frequent occurrence, and few operators but would, sooner or later, lose their jobs. And there is nothing especially peculiar or remarkable in this. Almost any one, worn out with fatigue, will go to sleep with the buzz of conversation about him; but let some one speak his name insistently over and over and the sound of it will somehow waken him. An operator's call is as familiar to him as his name, and will attract his attention just as surely. It was to this sixth sense, this second-self, that Allan was at last able to assign the duty of listening to the instruments in the office. He knew what they were saying, without having to stop all other work to listen; nay, without consciously listening at all. He had reached the place where he was competent to "take a trick"--much more competent, indeed, than young operators usually are. But still there came no opening for a regular position. A railroad does not "play favourites," no matter how deserving they may be. So long as a man does his work well, his position is his; and he stands in regular line for promotion. Incompetency brings its punishment, swift and sure; just as signal services, in time, bring their reward; but reward and punishment are according to an established rule. For the record of every man is kept minutely from the hour he enters the employ of the road. What he may have been or done before that does not matter, once employment is given him--he starts square. But even the smallest thing he does after that _does_ matter, as he finds out, in course of time, to his amazement and chagrin. The trainmaster keeps, in a drawer of his desk, a little book bound in red leather, wherein entries are made every day; and the heart of the trainman who is "on the carpet" falls when he sees it produced. It affects him a good deal as the book wherein the Recording Angel writes will affect most of us at the Day of Judgment.