t last
reaching the wind-swept summit to look off through miles of emptiness.
An adventure, coming home from a picnic as evening was falling, to sit
snug in that creaking capacious wagon which belonged to Stouty's father,
and to watch the lights and shadows that darted in and out of the pines
as the lantern swung beneath our wheels.

But even up here in the mountains the harbor reached with its cold
embrace. For at night it was an adventure hurriedly to undress and bury
myself in the covers in time to hear the first low rumble of "the night
freight" that went by some five miles distant. It made me think of the
trains on the docks, whose voices I had heard at night, and of the
things I had done with Sam. I would hear the mountain engine come
panting impatiently up the grade. As it reached the top I would rise
from my bed and soar off into space, in one swift rushing flight through
the darkness I would be there in the nick of time, I would swing on to a
freight car in the way Sam had shown me, climb to the top and crouching
there I would watch the dark roadway open ahead through the silent
forest. Lower would sink the voice of the engine until it became a faint
confused mutter. And the rest was dreamland.

This was one of those secret games I never told my mother about--until,
to my own surprise, in one of those long talks at night when she seemed
drawing me to her right out through my eyes, I blurted this out. My
mother wanted to know all about it. Did my hands get cold? Yes, colder
and colder, as listening here in bed I heard the first muttering of the
train and knew that in a few moments more I would take that five-mile
flight, right through the window and over the trees to the distant
track, to be there just ahead of the on-puffing engine. My voice
quivered excitedly as I spoke.

"I see--I see," she said soothingly. "And when you are riding on top of
a car--aren't you ever frightened?"

"No--because all the time I know that I am back there at home in my bed.
I can see myself back there behind me."

"Do you fall asleep in bed--or are you still on the top of the car the
last thing you can remember?"

"Most always on the top of the car."

"And when you sleep--do you always dream?"

"Yes--that's the finest part of it."

"Do you ever dream of Sam?"

"Yes."

"And all those things you did on the harbor?"

"Yes--all."

For some moments she sat by my bedside quietly stroking one of my hands.

"Billy."

"Ye