look around town. My sleep had done me a world of good, though I
still felt stiff and lame.

It was impossible to do much in the storm, but I covered up the bank
safe with some blankets, and nailed boards over some windows in other
buildings which had been broken by the explosion. I finally turned up
at the depot and went in to see about the fire.

As I opened the door I was astonished to hear the telegraph instrument
clicking. I knew the line was down and could not make out what it
meant. I understood no more about telegraphing than Kaiser, but in
visiting Tom Carr during the fall I had learned to know the call for
Track's End, which always sounded to me like clicket-ty-click-click,
clicket-ty, over and over again till Tom opened the switch and
answered. Well, as I stood listening I heard this call for Track's
End, clicket-ty-click-click, clicket-ty. Then I saw that the line must
have been repaired; but if this were so a train must have come nearly
through; otherwise the repairmen could not have reached the break,
which, I remembered, Tom said was just beyond Siding No. 15, fourteen
miles east of Track's End.

I went to the table and sat down and listened to the steady clicking,
the same thing, nothing but the call. It gave me a good feeling even
if I didn't know where it came from. I could not understand why any
other office should be calling Track's End, as they must all know the
station was closed for the winter. Then it came to me that a train
must be on the way, and somebody thought it had got here.

Just to see if I could, I reached over, opened the switch and tried
giving the Track's End call myself. Of course I did it very slowly,
with a long pause between each click; but I thought I would show the
fellow at the other end that Track's End wasn't quite dead after all.
Then I closed the switch, and instantly was surprised to hear the call
repeated, but just as slowly and in the same way that I had given it.
It came this way two or three times, then I gave it as best I could,
then it came the same way once more.

After this there was a long pause, and then it began to click
something else, very slowly, dot, dash, dash, dot, and so forth, with
a long stop between each. I picked up a pencil and marked it down,
slowly, just as it came. Every two or three clicks there was a very
long pause, and I would put down a monstrous big mark, thinking it
might be the end of a letter; and when it stopped this is what I had