e platform with the waiting passenger-train
drawn up beside it.

Seeing the cheerful lights in the side-tracked _Nadia_, he fell to
thinking of Eleanor, opening the door of conscious thought to her and
saying to himself that she was never more than a single step beyond the
threshold of that door. Looking across to the _Nadia_, he knew now why
he had hesitated so long before deciding to go on the night trip to
Timanyoni Park. Chilled hearts follow the analogy of cold hands. When
the fire is near, a man will go and spread his fingers to the blaze,
though he may be never so well assured that they will ache for it
afterward.

But with this thought came another and a more manly one--the woman he
loved was in Angels, and she would doubtless remain in Angels or its
immediate vicinity for some time; that was unpreventable; but he could
still resolve that there should not be a repetition of the old tragedy
of the moth and the candle. It was well that at the very outset a duty
call had come to enable him to break the spell of her nearness, and it
was also well that he had decided not to disregard it.

The train conductor's "All aboard!" shouted on the platform just below
his window, drew his attention from the _Nadia_ and the distracting
thought of Eleanor's nearness. Train 205 was ready to resume its
westward flight, and the locomotive bell was clanging musically. A
half-grown moon, hanging low in the black dome of the night, yellowed
the glow of the platform incandescents. The last few passengers were
hurrying up the steps of the cars, and the conductor was swinging his
lantern in the starting signal for the engineer.

At the critical moment, when the train was fairly in motion, Lidgerwood
saw Hallock--it was unmistakably Hallock this time--spring from the
shadow of a baggage-truck and whip up to the step of the smoker, and a
scant half-second later he saw Judson race across the wide platform and
throw himself like a self-propelled projectile against and through the
closing doors of the vestibule at the forward end of the sleeper.

Judson's dash and his capture of the out-going train were easily
accounted for: he had seen Hallock. But where was Hallock going?
Lidgerwood was still asking himself the question half-abstractedly when
he crossed to his desk and touched the buzzer-push which summoned an
operator from the despatcher's room.

"Wire Mr. Pennington Flemister, care of Goodloe, at Little Butte, that I
am coming out