The next moment
a long freight train passed between her and the automobile, and when it
was done with its noisy shunting backward and forward, and had gone
ahead, the street was empty.
Watching her chance between the lightning flashes, she darted from cover
to cover. Once beyond the signal tower she would be safe from Uncle Jed's
righteous eye, and able to dash down a short cut she knew that led into
the street back of the warehouse and thence into Calvary Alley. If she
could get to her old room for the next two hours, she could change her
clothes and be off again before any one knew of her night's adventure.
Just as she reached the corner, a flash more blinding than the rest
ripped the heavens. A line of fire raced toward her along the steel
rails, then leapt in a ball to the big bell at the top of the signal
tower. There was a deafening crash; all the electric lights went out, and
Nance found herself cowering against the fence, apparently the one living
object in that wild, wet, storm-racked night.
The only lights to be seen were the small red lamps suspended on the
slanting gates. Nance waited for them to lower when the freight train
that had backed into the yards five minutes before, rushed out again. But
the lamps did not move.
She crept back across the tracks, watching with fascinated horror the
dark windows of the signal tower. Why didn't Uncle Jed light his lantern?
Why hadn't he lowered the gates? All her fear of discovery was suddenly
swallowed up in a greater fear.
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