_By_ BURTON KLINE
From _The Stratford Journal_
_Copyright, 1918, by The Stratford Journal._
_Copyright, 1919, by Burton Kline._
The day’s work was finished and the entire job well started. I felt sure
we should meet old Bankard’s wishes fully. The rare old Virginia manor
and its wooded park were going to look again as the original designer
meant them to appear. Gordon, I know, agreed with me—Gordon, who was to
restore the house as I restored the grounds.
That evening he and I were sitting on a rusted iron bench in a corner of
the park that looked off over the hills, watching the summer dusk steal
up the eastern sky. I still wanted to talk of the day’s accomplishment,
but Gordon seemed to have grown—I was going to say dreamy, but he was
watchful instead.
Presently he drew out his watch and said, “In just about four minutes
you will hear it.”
“Hear what?”
“See that notch between those two hills about a mile and a half away
over there?” He pointed. “Keep your eye on that.”
“A blast?”
“Yes, a blast. But not the kind you think. Just watch.”
We smoked in silence, and my curiosity was about to break into speech
again, or ebb altogether, when it happened.
An ordinary freight train passed, but the locomotive, as it emerged from
the flat hillside and traversed the broad notch, let off a stream of
white puffs from its whistle, and then disappeared behind the other
hill, precisely like an episode on the stage.
In a moment the white puffs translated themselves from a sight in the
eye to a sound in the ear. And I tell the truth when I say that they
reproduced, with a mimicry that was startling, the notes of the last two
bars of “Annie Laurie.”
“What do you make of that!” Gordon turned and exulted to me over his odd
little discovery.
“How did you get on to it?”
“Oh, stumbled across it the first evening we were here. It goes every
day at this time, as regular as clock-work.”
“Some engineer with a sense of humor amusing himself,” I conjectured.
“But regularity isn’t amusement. He blows it every day at this time. And
always in the same way.”