Page:The Breath of Scandal (1922).djvu/142



ESIDE a country station, about midnight, the train halted and switched and backed with a banging jolt against a string of cars which it was coupling on.

As the shock reached Russell, he sat up. "Whoinel done that to me?" he demanded belligerently and blearing at Gregg in the streak of light from the depot. "Say, dudyou do me that dirty trick?"

His geniality and his admiration of Gregg were entirely gone; he did not recall his companion at all. "Say, whoth'ell are you? What you want? Where am I?"

"Go to sleep," said Gregg; and Russell stared about, evidently discerned nothing particularly disturbing and lay down again with eyes open for a while and mumbling to himself; but when the train went on, he soon was asleep.

It was almost daylight when Russell next awoke and the train was running about thirty miles an hour, Gregg guessed, through a broad, level farming section with widely separated stations, and those only in small country towns and villages—sometimes little more than a crossroads and watertank—which the freight had been passing with whistle screaming and without even slowing. This time Russell was clear in the head; in fact, before he stirred at all or even opened his eyes wide, he had been conscious for some minutes, Gregg