Breaking suddenly upon the steady drumming of the trucks, the prolonged
and husky roar of a locomotive whistle saluted an immediate
grade-crossing.
Roused by this sound from his solitary musings in the parlour-car of
which he happened temporarily to be the sole occupant, Mr. David Amber
put aside the magazine over which he had been dreaming, and looked out
of the window, catching a glimpse of woodland road shining white
between sombre walls of stunted pine. Lazily he consulted his watch.
"It's not for nothing," he observed pensively, "that this railroad
wears its reputation: we are consistently late."
His gaze, again diverted to the flying countryside, noted that it had
changed character, pine yielding to scrub-oak and second-growth--the
ragged vestments of an area some years since denuded by fire. This,
too, presently swung away, giving place to cleared land--arable acres golden with the stubble of garnered harvests or sentinelled with
unkempt shocks of corn.
In the south a shimmer of laughing gold and blue edged the faded
horizon.