IT was a nasty night, with a drizzling rain nearly as thick as a fog--a rain which obscured the signals and left the rails so slippery that a quick stop was almost impossible--yet just the sort of night to make a quick stop imperative if disaster were to be averted. Young John Steele, station-master, telegrapher, ticket-agent, and man-of-all-work in the lone shanty known on the railway map as Hitchen’s Siding, ignored by all other maps, stood beside the telegraph instrument wondering whether the rain had affected the efficiency of the wires, or whether the train despatcher had gone crazy. Here was Number Sixteen, the freight from the west, coming in, and there were no orders for her. Number…
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