down and die, who is to bear it? And why does he not
consummate the proffered sacrifice by dying at once? I would cheerfully
bury him. He passes slowly, lingeringly, seeming to pause outside of my
window, as if my casement enshrined that form like the snowdrift and
that throat like the swan's. But, although he vanishes finally, the
street has become alive. Two men pass in deeply-interesting
conversation, one of them assuring the other that he has not done "a
stroke's work" in two years. He is maudlin, of course. "A stroke's
work"? And as if any man could expect to find work and to do it after
keeping such hours as these!

And now comes "the whistler." I had been expecting him. He is to-night
whistling airs from _Pinafore_. The _Pirates_, thank Heaven! furnishes
him no airs. He whistles--let me confess, reluctant although I am to do
it--he whistles to perfection. There is nothing experimental, nothing
tentative, in his notes, which come clear, sharp, in perfect time and
tune.

The clock strikes two. It is the voice of doom, for presently the 2.19
freight-train will thunder slowly through our end of the town. It
renders my case utterly hopeless. One might as well expect to sleep in
momentary expectation of the Juggernaut. I know its every sound: I can
feel the bridge at ---- Junction, five miles away, tremble under it. I
listen and wait, every nerve on edge. A mile and a half the other side
of our station the engine will first snort, then begin a series of
shrieks--shrieks suggestive of warning, imminent danger, supreme peril,
the climax of a tragical catastrophe. For at least five minutes shall I
be compelled to listen while the engineer--if it be a real living
engine-man who impels this chorus of fiends--runs the full scale of his
shrill tooting, perhaps deeming it essential to the safety of the town,
which ought to be asleep, or to the dignity of his long, creeping train
of coal- and freight-laden cars.

Even the Juggernaut passes: it is gone. I emerge, faint and wornout from
the trial. Now that it is toward three o'clock, everybody except the
policeman in bed, and no more trains to come until after five, one might
suppose there was some chance for an interval of peace, of repose. I get
up and walk about a little in order to feel, with the opportunity, the
inclination for slumber. Yes, it will come....

Scarcely have I ventured to close my eyes again before there begins a
chirp, a twitter, a general thrill of sound