She was the wife of a railway locomotive engineer, and the two lived in the newly built house to which he had taken her as a bride a year before.

Many other people in the country railroad town used to laugh at a thing which she had once said to a gossiping neighbour:

“I can tell the sound of the whistle on Tom's engine from all other whistles. Every afternoon when his train gets to the crossing at the planing-mill, I hear that whistle, and then I know it's time to get Tom's supper.”

The gossips found something humourous in the fact that the engineer's wife recognized the whistle of her husband's engine and knew by it when to begin to prepare his supper. So are the small manifestations of love and devotion regarded by coarse minds. You frequently observe this in the conduct of certain people at the theatre when tender sentiments are uttered upon the stage.

Perhaps the men were envious of the engineer. He had a prettier wife, they said, when he was not present, than was deserved by a mere freight engineer, very recently elevated from the post of fireman. Perhaps, also, the petty malevolence of the women was due to the wife's superior comeliness. Be that as it may, each afternoon at half-past four or thereabouts, when Tom's whistle was blown at the crossing by the planing-mill, loungers in the grocery store and wives in their kitchens smiled knowingly and said:

“Time to begin to get Tom's supper, now.”

But the engineer was careless and his wife was disdainful of their neighbours. She loved the sound of that whistle. In the earliest days of their married life it even sent the crimson to her cheeks. The engineer could make it as expressive as music. It began like a sudden glad cry; it died away lingeringly, tenderly. Virtually it said to one pair of ears:

“My darling, I have come back to you.”

Whenever the engineer pulled the rope for that particular signal, he pictured his wife arising from her work-basket in their little parlour with a thrill of pleasure and affection, and passing out to the kitchen.

She, likewise, at the signal, made a mental image of Tom, seated in the engine cab, his one hand fixed upon the shining lever, his eyes fixed upon the glistening tracks ahead.

At six o'clock, usually, supper was hot, and Tom arrived through the front gateway, glancing at the flower-bed in the centre of the diminutive grass plot, carrying his dinner-pail, having divested himself of his grimy, greasy blouse and overalls at the great repair shops, where his engine had already begun, with much panting, to spend the night.

In a small railroad town on the main line, one is continually hearing locomotive whistles. All the inhabitants know that one long moan of the steam is the signal of the train's swift approach; that two short shrieks of the whistle direct the trainmen to tighten the brakes; that four, given when the train is still, are intended for the flagman, who has gone away to the rear to warn back the next train, and that they tell him to return to his own train as it is about to start; that five whistles in succession announce a wreck and command the immediate attendance of the wreck crew.

In the town many cheeks blanch when those five long, ominous wails of the escaping steam cleave the air. A husband, a son, a father who has gone forth blithely in the morning, with his dinner-pail full, may be brought out of the wreck, mangled or dead. And until complete details are known there is a tremor in the whole community. Some hearts beat faster, others seem to stand still. People speak in hushed tones.

One afternoon, the engineer's wife, observing the altitude of the sun, looked at the clock and saw that the time was a few minutes before five.

Tom's whistle had not yet blown.

At five-fifteen came the sound of another whistle. It was prolonged and then repeated. The engineer's wife stood still and counted.

Five!

The most docile and apparently cheerful patient in the —— Asylum for the Insane is a widow, still young, who spends the greater time of each day sewing and humming tunes softly to herself. Every afternoon at about half-past four she assumes a listening attitude, suddenly hears an inaudible whistle, smiles tenderly, starts up and places invisible dishes and impalpable viands upon an imaginary table, and then loses herself in a reverie which ends in slumber.

No striking clock is allowed within her hearing. It was long ago noticed that the stroke of five or any series of five similar sounds would cause her to moan piteously.

The people afar in the country town do not laugh now when they talk of Tom and the whistle which was shrieking madly as he and his engine plunged down the bank together on that day when the huge boulder rolled from the hillside stone quarry and lay upon the tracks, just on this side of the curve above the town.