Mood

For roughly the first half of the story, Wolfe paints an idealistic picture of a railroad engineer who has built up a silent relationship with two women. The reader is led to believe that this is going to be a positive story, since even negative events like the deaths the engineer has witnessed are tempered by his idyllic vision. However, a little more than halfway through, the mood. or emotional quality of the story, starts to change: "Everything was as strange to him as if he had never seen this town before." From this point on, the reader's awareness of the changing mood increases as the engineer's "perplexity of . . . spirit" increases. When the engineer gets to the cottage and sees the woman's face, he—along with the reader—realizes that his idyllic vision is a lie. As the story progresses to its negative ending, the reader...