On a long lounge in the library car a well-nourished lawyer lay sleeping in a way that I had not dreamed a political lawyer could sleep.  One gamey M.P.—­double P, I was told—­had been robbing this same lawyer of a good deal of rest recently, and he was trying at a mile a minute to catch up with his sleep.  I could feel the sleeper slam her flanges against the ball of the rail as we rounded the perfectly pitched curves, and the little semi-quaver that tells the trained traveller that the man up ahead is moving the mile-posts, at least one every minute.  At the first stop, twenty-five miles out, the fat drummer snapped his watch again, but he did not say, “Huh.”  We had made up five minutes.

A few passengers swung down here, and a few others swung up; and off we dashed, drilling the darkness.  I looked in on the lawyer again, for I would have speech with him; but he was still sleeping the sleep of the virtuous, with the electric light full on his upturned baby face, that reminds me constantly of the late Tom Reed.

A woman I know was putting one of her babies to bed in lower 2, when we wiggled through a reverse curve that was like shooting White Horse Rapids in a Peterboro.  The child intended for lower 2 went over into 4.  “Never mind,” said its mother, “we have enough to go around;” and so she left that one in 4 and put the next one in 2, and so on.

At the next stop where you “Y” and back into the town, the people, impatient, were lined up, ready to board the Limited.  When we swung over the switches again, we were only ten minutes late.

As often as the daring driver eased off for a down grade I could hear the hiss of steam through the safety-valve above the back of the black flier, and I could feel the flanges against the ball of the rail, and the little tell-tale semi-quaver of the car.

By now the babies were all abed; and from bunk to bunk she tucked them in, kissed them good-night, and then cuddled down beside the last one, a fair-haired girl who seemed to have caught and kept, in her hair and in her eyes, the sunshine of the three short summers through which she had passed.

Once more I went and stood by the lounge where the lawyer lay, but I had not the nerve to wake him.

The silver moon rose and lit the ripples on the lake that lay below my window as the last of the diners came from the cafe car.  Along the shore of the sleeping lake our engine swept like a great, black, wingless bird of night.  Presently I felt the frogs of South Parkdale; and when, from her hot throat she called “Toronto,” the fat and fretful traveller opened his great gold watch.  He did not snap it now, but looked into its open face and almost smiled; for we were touching Toronto on the tick of time.

I stepped from the car, for I was interested in the fat drummer.  I wanted to see him meet her, and hold her hand, and tell her what a really, truly, good husband he had been, and how he had hurried home.  As he came down the short stair a friend faced him and said “Good-night,” where we say “Good-evening.”  “Hello, Bill,” said the fat drummer.  They shook hands languidly.  The fat man yawned and asked, “Anything doing?” “Not the littlest,” said Bill.  “Then,” said Jim (the fat man), “let us go up to the King Edward, sit down, and have a good, quiet smoke.”