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Updated: May 29, 2025
"It was a fearful night to make up a train in a hurry as much as a man's life was worth to work even slow in the yard a night like that. But what limit is set to a switchman's courage I have never known, because I've never known one to balk at a yardmaster's order.
At the terminal station of a great railroad, in the midst of a network of shining rails, stands the switchman's tower. By means of steel levers the man in his tower can throw his different switches and open one track to a train and close another; by means of various signals the switchman can tell if any given line is clear or if his levers do their work properly.
The face of the old man became mottled with a sudden fear, but he jerked it forwards once or twice with an effort at self-control. Presently he steadied to the ordeal of suspense, while he kept saying to himself, "What does he know what which?" "Malpractice resulting in death that was poor Jimmy Tearle; and something else resulting in death that was the switchman's wife.
When Wacker subbed for the old switchman, did he have a special key?" "N no," answered the watchman hesitatingly, "for I remember Wacker loaned me the old switchman's key the first night. Hold on, though!" cried McCarthy with a spurt of memory, "it comes back to me clear now.
"The wind, howling around the freight-cars strung about us, sucked the guarded lantern flames up into blue and green flickers in the globes; they lighted the priest's face as he took off his hat and laid it beside him, and lighted the switchman's eyes looking steadily up from the rail.
"Littler than the littlest" it was, indeed; only a railway switchman's "box," erected to shelter him in just such emergencies and from the cold of winter nights. It had tiny windows and a narrow door; and, placing Bonny Angel on the corner bench its only furnishing Take-a-Stitch hastened to make all secure.
"Und yer sthold dot coats fum mine vindo'," said a stout man shoving his fist under the switchman's nose. "A gentleman gave me the coat in this saloon," urged the striker. "Why, he was here a moment ago." "Ah! dot's too tin," laughed the tailor, "tak' 'im avay, Meester Bleasman, tak' 'im avay," and the miserable man was hurried away to prison.
"No, you weren't alone; and if the switchman and the switchman's wife weren't dead and out of it all, and if the other man that didn't matter any more than you wasn't alive and hadn't a family that does matter, I wouldn't be asking you peaceably for two thousand dollars as my fee for getting you off two cases that might have sent you to prison for twenty years, or, maybe, hung you to the nearest tree."
He scorched ahead, and I headed straight for the switchman's hut, rounded it neatly, and leaned myself and my wheel against the side of it, helpless with laughter. A red Irish face, with a short black pipe in its mouth, thrust itself out of the tiny window just in front of me, and a voice with a rich brogue exclaimed: "As purty a bit of riding as iver Oi see!" "Wasn't it?" I cried.
Let me fill the pipe with some of this mild switchman's delight, and you try that," and he brought the pipe near to the boy. "Take it away, take it away," said a weak voice, coming from under a pillow on the lounge. "Oh, Uncle Ike, I will never touch a pipe again.
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