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"Did you stop my train, lady?" asked the conductor, and he seemed rather angry. "Yes," was the answer. "My Carlo ran off, just as it started, and I saw the little girl pick him up. Then I pulled the whistle-cord, and stopped the train. I just had to jump off and get my Carlo!" "Well, now that you have him, please get back on again," said the conductor. "We are late now, and must hurry."
It was old Zeb's pride and boast that with a single exception, during the sixteen years the clock had been in service, no man could say that Zeb had been more than a second late or early with his whistle-blowing. That exception occurred when Bryce Cardigan, invading the engine room while Zeb was at luncheon, looped the whistle-cord until the end dangled seven feet above ground.
Without waiting for orders from the yardmaster, Jones signed to his fireman, reversed, and threw open his throttle. The fireman clutched the whistle-cord and began jerking out a succession of wild shrieks and toots. As the train started away from the bridge, Blake swung to the ground to meet the excited men who came running from all directions.
At precisely six fifty-nine and a half, therefore, the engineer's hand closed over the handle of the whistle-cord, and Dan Kenyon, standing on the steam-carriage with his hand on the lever, took a thirty-second squint through a rather grimy window that gave upon the drying-yard and the mill-office at the head of it.
"What's yon?" cried McLeod, springing up. Far ahead, in the narrow apex of the converging rails, stood a black form, motionless, mysterious. McLeod grasped the whistle-cord. The black form loomed higher in the moonlight and was clearly silhouetted against the horizon a big moose standing across the track. They could see his grotesque head, his shadowy horns, his high, sloping shoulders.
We were within fifty feet of her, and our speed was reduced to half, when Billy said sharply: "Hold her, John for God's sake!" But I had the "Mary Ann" in the back motion before the words left his mouth, and was choking her on sand. Billy leaned upon the boiler-head and pulled the whistle-cord, but the white figure did not move. I shut my eyes as we passed the spot where she had stood.
With a sage and prophetic eye fixed upon the face of the clock, and a particularly greasy hand grasping the whistle-cord, Zeb would wait until the clock registered exactly six-fifty-nine and a half whereupon the seven o'clock whistle would commence blowing, to cease instantly upon the stroke of the hour.
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