I walked along a narrow path at the very edge of a railway embankment.  The moonlight glided over the lines which were already covered with dew.  Great shadows from the clouds kept flitting over the embankment.  Far ahead, a dim green light was glimmering peacefully.

“So everything is well,” I thought, looking at them.

I had a quiet, peaceful, comfortable feeling in my heart.  I was returning from a tryst, I had no need to hurry; I was not sleepy, and I was conscious of youth and health in every sigh, every step I took, rousing a dull echo in the monotonous hum of the night.  I don’t know what I was feeling then, but I remember I was happy, very happy.

I had gone not more than three-quarters of a mile when I suddenly heard behind me a monotonous sound, a rumbling, rather like the roar of a great stream.  It grew louder and louder every second, and sounded nearer and nearer.  I looked round; a hundred paces from me was the dark copse from which I had only just come; there the embankment turned to the right in a graceful curve and vanished among the trees.  I stood still in perplexity and waited.  A huge black body appeared at once at the turn, noisily darted towards me, and with the swiftness of a bird flew past me along the rails.  Less than half a minute passed and the blur had vanished, the rumble melted away into the noise of the night.

It was an ordinary goods truck.  There was nothing peculiar about it in itself, but its appearance without an engine and in the night puzzled me.  Where could it have come from and what force sent it flying so rapidly along the rails?  Where did it come from and where was it flying to?

If I had been superstitious I should have made up my mind it was a party of demons and witches journeying to a devils’ sabbath, and should have gone on my way; but as it was, the phenomenon was absolutely inexplicable to me.  I did not believe my eyes, and was entangled in conjectures like a fly in a spider’s web....

I suddenly realized that I was utterly alone on the whole vast plain; that the night, which by now seemed inhospitable, was peeping into my face and dogging my footsteps; all the sounds, the cries of the birds, the whisperings of the trees, seemed sinister, and existing simply to alarm my imagination.  I dashed on like a madman, and without realizing what I was doing I ran, trying to run faster and faster.  And at once I heard something to which I had paid no attention before:  that is, the plaintive whining of the telegraph wires.

“This is beyond everything,” I said, trying to shame myself.  “It’s cowardice! it’s silly!”

But cowardice was stronger than common sense.  I only slackened my pace when I reached the green light, where I saw a dark signal-box, and near it on the embankment the figure of a man, probably the signalman.

“Did you see it?” I asked breathlessly.

“See whom?  What?”

“Why, a truck ran by.”