Page:Ralph on the Railroad.djvu/1038

214 they rounded a curve and struck down into a cut beyond which lay the town of Fordham.

"Better to be safe," responded Ralph. "There's a crossing right ahead where the old spur cuts in."

"Yes, but who ever crosses it?" demanded the fireman.

"Some one did two nights ago," insisted Ralph. "I'm positive that we just grazed a light wagon crossing the roadway leading into the cut."

"Then it was some stray farmer lost off his route," declared Fogg. "Why, that old spur has been rusting away for over five years, to my recollection. As to the old road beyond being a highway, that's nonsense. There's no thoroughfare beyond the end of the spur. The road ends at a dismantled, abandoned old factory, and nobody lives anywhere in this section."

"Is that so?" Toot! toot! toot!

The whistle screeched out sharply. The fireman stuck his head out of the window. Ralph had already looked ahead.

"I declare!" shouted Fogg, staring hard. "Swish—gone! But what was it we passed?"

Ralph did not speak. He sat still in a queer kind of realization of what they both had just seen, and in the retrospect. While he and his fireman had been conversing, just ahead in the white moonlight he had seen two human figures against