I grew more and more wide-awake.  At Cresson I got up on my elbow and blinked out at the station lights.  Some passengers boarded the train there and I heard a woman’s low tones, a southern voice, rich and full.  Then quiet again.  Every nerve was tense:  time passed, perhaps ten minutes, possibly half an hour.  Then, without the slightest warning, as the train rounded a curve, a heavy body was thrown into my berth.  The incident, trivial as it seemed, was startling in its suddenness, for although my ears were painfully strained and awake, I had heard no step outside.  The next instant the curtain hung limp again; still without a sound, my disturber had slipped away into the gloom and darkness.  In a frenzy of wakefulness, I sat up, drew on a pair of slippers and fumbled for my bath-robe.

From a berth across, probably lower ten, came that particular aggravating snore which begins lightly, delicately, faintly soprano, goes down the scale a note with every breath, and, after keeping the listener tense with expectation, ends with an explosion that tears the very air.  I was more and more irritable:  I sat on the edge of the berth and hoped the snorer would choke to death.  He had considerable vitality, however; he withstood one shock after another and survived to start again with new vigor.  In desperation I found some cigarettes and one match, piled my blankets over my grip, and drawing the curtains together as though the berth were still occupied, I made my way to the vestibule of the car.

I was not clad for dress parade.  Is it because the male is so restricted to gloom in his every-day attire that he blossoms into gaudy colors in his pajamas and dressing-gowns?  It would take a Turk to feel at home before an audience in my red and yellow bathrobe, a Christmas remembrance from Mrs. Klopton, with slippers to match.

So, naturally, when I saw a feminine figure on the platform, my first instinct was to dodge.  The woman, however, was quicker than I; she gave me a startled glance, wheeled and disappeared, with a flash of two bronze-colored braids, into the next car.

Cigarette box in one hand, match in the other, I leaned against the uncertain frame of the door and gazed after her vanished figure.  The mountain air flapped my bath-robe around my bare ankles, my one match burned to the end and went out, and still I stared.  For I had seen on her expressive face a haunting look that was horror, nothing less.  Heaven knows, I am not psychological.  Emotions have to be written large before I can read them.  But a woman in trouble always appeals to me, and this woman was more than that.  She was in deadly fear.