Simeon Tetlow's Shadow. Jennette Lee

sir. He says he cannot help her.”

      “Umph!” Simeon shifted again in his chair. His eye dropped to the pile of papers beside him.

      The boy’s hands had reached out to them. Almost instinctively the fingers were threading their way among them, sorting and arranging in neat piles.

      Simeon watched the fingers jealously. It was as if he might spring upon them and fasten them there forever. The young man’s eyes traveled about the room, noting signs of disorder. “I can stay today,” he said slowly. He hesitated. “I can stay a week, sir, if you want me.”

      “I don’t want you a week.” The man was looking at him savagely. “You must bring them here!” he said.

      “Here!” in doubt.

      The man nodded. “They can live here as well as anywhere!”

      The boy pondered it a minute. He shook his head slowly.

      “They would n’t be happy,” he said. “She has friends there, in Bridgewater—people she’s known ever since she was a little girl—and father has his work. He ’s an old man. It would n’t be easy for him to get work here. He has an easy job—”

      “Work enough here,” growled Simeon. He was studying the boy’s face keenly. Was it possible the fellow was making capital of all this? He threw off the thought. “Work enough here,” he repeated.

      John considered it again. He looked up. The lamps threw their clear light into the future. “I ’d thought of that, sir,” he said slowly, “and I ’ve talked about it—a little. But I saw it hurt them. So I dropped it.”

      “You ’re missing the chance of a lifetime,” said Simeon. “There are men working below that’d give ten years off their life to get what you’ve got without trying.”

      The boy’s quiet eye met his.

      “Oh, you ’ve tried—you’ve tried. I don’t mean that,” he said testily. “But it’s a case of fitness—the chance of a lifetime,” he repeated significantly.

      The boy looked at him. “I know it, sir. I’ve thought about it a long time. It ’s hard to do. But, you see, we never have but one father and mother.”

      The other met it, blinking. “Umph!”

      “I shall try to get something at the Bridgewater office. I thought perhaps you would recommend me if there was a vacancy.”

      “There is n’t any,” said Simeon shortly—almost with relief.

      “The second shipping-clerk left week before last.”

      “You don’t want that?”

      “I think I do.”

      Simeon turned vaguely toward the pigeonholes. The boy’s quick eye was before him. “This is the one, sir.”

      Simeon smiled grimly. He drew out a blank from its place and filled it in. “You won’t like it,” he said, holding the pen in his teeth while he reached for the blotter. “It ’s heavy lifting, and Simpson ’s no angel to work under. No chance to rise, either.” He was glaring at the boy, a kind of desperate affection growing in his eyes..

      The boy returned the look mistily. “You make it a little hard, sir. I wish I could stay.” He half held out his hand and drew it back.

      Simeon ignored it. He had taken down a ledger and picked a letter from the pile before him. The interview was over. The President of the “R. and Q.” Railroad was not hanging on anybody’s neck.

      “It ’s the other ledger, sir,” said John quickly, “the farther one.” He reached over and laid it deftly before his employer.

      Simeon pushed it from him savagely. “Go to the devil!” he said.

      The boy went, shutting the door quietly behind him.

IV

       Table of Contents

      IT was six o’clock—the close of a perfect June day. Not even the freight engines, pulling and hauling up and down the yard, with their puffs of black smoke, could darken the sky. Over in the meadow, beyond the network of tracks, the bobolinks had been tumbling and bubbling all day. It was time to close shop now, and they had subsided into the long grass. In the office the assistant shipping-clerk was finishing the last bill of lading. He put it to one side and looked at his watch. A look of relief crossed his face as he replaced it and climbed down from the high stool. It had been a hard day in the Bridge-water freight-office. News had come, in the early morning, of a wreck, three miles down the track—a sleeper and a freight had collided where the road curves by the stonework of the long bridge, and John had been sent down to help in looking after the freight.

      It was one of the worst wrecks the road had known. No one placed the blame. Those on the ground were too busy to have theories; and those at a distance had to change their theories a dozen times during the day. At noon word came that the president of the road was on his way to the scene of the accident. The news reached John as he was getting into the wrecking-car to return to the office. He paused for a flying minute, one foot on the step of the car. Then he swung off, and the car moved on without him. He spent the next half hour going over the ground. He made careful notes of every detail, recalling points from memory, taking measurements, jotting down facts and figures with his swift, short fingers. When he had finished he took the next wrecking-car back, making up for lost time by lunching at his desk while he worked.

      All the afternoon he had been doing the work of three men. … Six o’clock. He got down from the high stool, stretching himself and rubbing his arms. In ten minutes the special would pass. He glanced out through the office window at the back of the building. High at the top of the sandy bank a bunch of clover bloomed against the sky, huge heads, with pink-and-white hearts—a kind of alfalfa—perhaps a seed from some passing freight. He had seen them, flaunting there, between hurried snatches of work, all the afternoon. He would pick them and carry them to her. But not now. … He looked again at his watch. He wanted to see the special when it passed. It would not stop, probably, but he might catch a glimpse of Simeon Tetlow. He had often wished he might see him, and he had often thought of his face the morning he said good-by. Beneath the anger in it had been something the boy could not fathom—a kind of entreaty. … He must find some way to give him the notes he had made of the wreck. He stepped out on the platform, looking up and down the shine on the tracks. The sun, coming low across the meadow beyond the tracks, made everything beautiful. A whistle sounded. The special—at the upper bridge. In five minutes it would pass. A smile curved his lips. The sound of quick bells and puffs and wheels came pleasantly to him from the engines at work in the yard down beyond the freight-house. A long train at the left was backing in slowly. John watched it and jingled some pennies in his pockets. He was thinking of Simeon Tetlow, the smile still on his lips. … Suddenly the smile stopped. The fingers gripped the pennies and held them fast. … His eye flashed along the top of the slow-moving train.—No one in sight—level tracks—the special two minutes off—the freight taking her track. … The switch, if he could make it—It was not a thought, but a swift turn of the short legs. Never had they seemed to him so fat and heavy beneath him. Yet they were flying over the ties as the wind sweeps a field. The short, strong body dropped itself upon the switch and hung there, gripping—a whirl of cinders and blast and roar. … Had he come fast enough? … Ages passed. He lifted his head and looked back up the long tracks. The freight was still backing in slowly. The special—like an old lady who has taken the wrong crossing—was emitting a sound of dismay, a quick, high note. The wheels reversed and she came back, puffing and complaining, in little jerks.

      When the train halted Simeon Tetlow stepped down from the platform. His hand, as it left the iron rail, trembled a little. He thrust it into the pocket of his light coat, looking