The clock in the hotel office struck three. Orlando Brotherson countedthe strokes; then went on writing. His transom was partly open andhe had just heard a step go by his door. This was nothing new. He hadalready heard it several times before that night. It was Mr. Challoner'sstep, and every time it passed, he had rustled his papers or scratchedvigorously with his pen. "He is keeping watch for Oswald," was histhought. "They fear a sudden end to this. No one, not the son of mymother knows me. Do I know myself?"
Four o'clock! The light was still burning, the pile of letters he waswriting increasing.
Five o'clock! A rattling shade betrays an open window. No other sounddisturbs the quiet of the room. It is empty now; but Mr. Challoner, longsince satisfied that all was well, goes by no more. Silence has settledupon the hotel;--that heavy silence which precedes the dawn.
There was silence in the streets also. The few who were abroad, creptquietly along. An electric storm was in the air and the surchargedclouds hung heavy and low, biding the moment of outbreak. A man who hadleft a place of many shadows for the more open road, paused and lookedup at these clouds; then went calmly on.
Suddenly the shriek of an approaching train tears through the valley.Has it a call for this man? No. Yet he pauses in the midst of the streethe is crossing and watches, as a child might watch, for the flash ofits lights at the end of the darkened vista. It comes--filling the emptyspace at which he stares with moving life--engine, baggage car and along string of Pullmans. Then all is dark again and only the noise ofits slackening wheels comes to him through the night. It has stopped atthe station. A minute longer and it has started again, and the quicklylessening rumble of its departure is all that remains of this vision ofman's activity and ceaseless expectancy. When it is quite gone and allis quiet, a sigh falls from the man's lips and he moves on, but thistime, for some unexplainable reason, in the direction of the station.With lowered head he passes along, noting little till he arrives withinsight of the depot where some freight is being handled, and a trunkor two wheeled down the platform. No sight could be more ordinary orunsuggestive, but it has its attraction for him, for he looks up as hegoes by and follows the passage of that truck down the platform till ithas reached the corner and disappeared. Then he sighs again and againmoves on.
A cluster of houses, one of them open and lighted, was all which laybetween him now and the country road. He was hurrying past, for his stephad unconsciously quickened as he turned his back upon the station, whenhe was seized again by that mood of curiosity and stepped up to the doorfrom which a light issued and looked in. A common eating-room lay beforehim, with rudely spread tables and one very sleepy waiter taking ordersfrom a new arrival who sat with his back to the door. Why did the lonelyman on the sidewalk start as his eye fell on the latter's commonplacefigure, a hungry man demanding breakfast in a cheap, country restaurant?His own physique was powerful while that of the other looked slim andfrail. But fear was in the air, and the brooding of a tempest affectssome temperaments in a totally unexpected manner. As the man insideturns slightly and looks up, the master figure on the sidewalk vanishes,and his step, if any one had been interested enough to listen, ringswith a new note as it turns into the country road it has at lastreached.
But no one heeded. The new arrival munches his roll and waitsimpatiently for his coffee, while without, the clouds pile soundlesslyin the sky, one of them taking the form of a huge hand with clutchingfingers reaching down into the hollow void beneath.