Page:The Galaxy, Volume 5.djvu/535

Rh conscious of the tender face of Margaret hanging above me, and a part of the delirium of which had been a singular confusion of her face with that of the man asleep in the mountain of meadow hay. The world was in the full, deep flush of Summer; life seemed so good, love was so sure; Margaret was constantly beside me, the Black Bess was ready for me, and Christmas Day, when it should come wrapped in its soft snows, was to give me my wife forever.

I got up quickly, too quickly—too quickly by half; a long convalescence would have acted like a buffer to the shock I had received, and deadened its effect on all my system; but every month's salary was precious to me now; it was so much more added to that already laid up for the enriching of the humble little home whose prospect then was heaven; and before October had reddened her parallels, I drove the Black Bess again by night out of Waterwey.

Meantime my head was far from right. I knew that by the dull ache that sate upon it like a leaden cap; by the sharp pains that sometimes stabbed my eyeballs, as if needles were in the entering rays of light. Often, too, when people were speaking with me, their words sounded dully a long way off, and if I roused myself to some manner of enforced attention, I paid for it by a fresh assault of blinding pain. When in this condition, I went through many of my duties by mere mechanical routine, and I think my faithful fireman, George Rowe, did more at such times toward running the train on time than did its engineer—unless the Black Bess were herself gifted with that sort of wizardry and more than human power which I sometimes fancied belonged to her. All this annoyance of mine, however, was but intermittent; had it been otherwise, had it been constant, I should not live to remember it; and gradually I began to believe that it was wearing off, never dreaming that it was but assuming a new form.

My spirits had been greatly depressed during the period when I felt these results of my disaster the most acutely; they became as much too buoyant when I found that my natural strength and vigor were conquering the recurrence of the attacks. I had fully realized how wrong and how impossible my intended marriage with Margaret would be under such circumstances, and only when I found myself able to look the rising sun in the face, and to drive from twilight to twilight, from the gray of evening to the gray of dawn, without an extra throb in my temples, did I dare to dream fresh dreams of my long-desired home and its delights. The only trace of trouble that appeared to be remaining with me, at last, was a slightly-impaired eyesight, so that what once I could distinctly see in detail when at the distance of a mile, now became but a blur, and rendered me, on more or less seldom occasion, subject to some optical delusion. However, this did not interfere with my business, and, as I said, I went and came in such an atmosphere of expectation and assurance, that I might have seemed to any spiritual observer like one transfigured and walking in a nimbus.

Things were in this state with me, when, one night, as usual, I took the Express out of Waterwey. It was a somewhat heavier train than my ordinary one, and in the safe of the special car that went through with us was a large amount of coin and valuables. Remembering some daring robberies, in which trains had been thrown from the track by means of obstacles placed there by the villains who subsequently rifled them, I resolved on an even more particular look-out than common; I told the Black Bess, as I mounted, that she must spring to it, for there was work to do, and she answered to my hand like a live creature. I heard them sounding the irons down our long length—then the word was given, and our quivering carrier, starting well in hand, soon warmed to her work, and bounded along as if she meant to be the victor of some demoniacal race.