At the foot of the crude wooden stairway she no longer hesitated.
"Uncle Jed!" she shouted against the wind, "Uncle Jed, are you there?"
There was no answer.
She climbed the steep steps and tried the door, which yielded grudgingly
to her pressure. It was only when she put her shoulder to it and pushed
with all her strength that she made an opening wide enough to squeeze
through. There on the floor, lying just as he had fallen, was the old
gate-tender, his unseeing eyes staring up into the semi-darkness.
Nance looked at him in terror, then at the signal board and the levers
that controlled the gates. A terrible trembling seized her, and she
covered her eyes with her hands.
"God tell me quick, what must I do?" she demanded, and the next instant,
as if in answer to her prayer, she heard herself gasp, "Dan!" as she
fumbled wildly for the telephone.
CHAPTER XXI
DAN
The shrill whistle that at noon had obtruded its discord into Nance
Molloy's thoughts had a very different effect on Dan Lewis, washing his
hands under the hydrant in the factory yard. _He_ had not forgotten that
it was Saturday. Neither had Growler, who stood watching him with an
oblique look in his old eye that said as plain as words that he knew what
momentous business was brewing at five o'clock.
It was not only Saturday for Dan, but the most important Saturday that
ever figured on the calendar. In his heroic efforts to conform to Mrs.
Purdy's standard of perfection he had studied the advice to young men in
the "Sunday Echo.
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