"You'll go, then?" Barcus inquired. "I'd just as lief, myself"
"No; let me," Alan insisted. "It's not far—not more than a quarter of a mile.
Barcus nodded, his face drawn and gray in the moon-glare. "Thank God!" he breathed brokenly, "you're able—afraid I'm not."
He sat down suddenly and rested his head on his knees. "Don't be longer than you can help," he muttered thickly.
The truth, however, was that Alan himself was hardly more fit for the tramp. Fatigue seemed to have fastened weights to heels that dragged with ever-heavier reluctance as he plodded along the beach.
But all at once he heard a series of staccato snorts, the mellow tolling of a brazen bell, the rumble of a train!
And then he ran, weariness altogether forgotten in the surge of hope attending this discovery that he was again in touch with civilization.
As he came round the headland he saw before him the quiet vista of a village street with a railroad station.
He burst into the station just as the agent was closing up for the night.
"Nah," the latter averred; "they ain't no more trains till mornin'. Can't y' see I'm shuttin' up?"
"But surely there must be a telegraph station"
