Page:Cy Warman--The express messenger and other tales of the rail.djvu/214

202 shall send him to you at once, and now you must brace up—good-by."

The meeting between Creamer and his sick friend was too much for the patient, and the chief surgeon, who had come in with the visitor, was obliged to send him away almost immediately.

It was nearly a week before any more visitors were admitted to the sick room. Only the flowers came every morning. They were not many but always fresh.

"I'm strong enough to know now, Dan," said the patient when Creamer had been left alone with him, "and I want you to tell me all about it."

"About what, Tom?"

"About the collision—how many were killed?"

Dan assured him that there had been no collision on the road for over a year. "And you," he explained, "have been here just a month to-day—this is the twentieth of January."

"Don't lie to me, Dan,—anybody could do that; but from you I ask the truth, and I think