Alick rushed out without waiting to put on his cap. He glanced up at the signal box. It seemed dim and dusky. "James Cannon has let his lamp go low!" muttered Alick to himself.
At that moment he heard first one warning whistle, and then two. He was not quite sure about the last, for the wind was shrieking its loudest, and it was not easy to be certain about anything.
He looked up and down the line, shading his eyes from the rain with his hand.
Great God of heaven! The goods train was not yet off the single line. Both signals were standing at clear, and the points were not shifted. The Boat express was thundering down the hill from Port Andrew at the rate of sixty miles an hour, and would be through the Junction in a minute. And there upon the single metals right ahead would be Duncan Urquhart with his heavy goods train.
Muckle Alick snatched up a huge bar of metal, which was used in forcing round the cranks when they reversed the engines on the turn-table by the engine house, the same which little Hugh had almost spent his life in trying to observe more nearly.
With this ponderous tool in his hand Muckle Alick rushed along to the facing points, whence Duncan Urquhart's goods train might possibly be guided upon the proper metals ere the express rushed past. As he ran he saw Duncan's headlights coming, and the thunder of the [285]express was also in his ears. He shouted with all his power, but the wind whirled away Muckle Alick's cries as though they had been baby Gavin's.
On came the goods train, laden with heavy merchandise and coals, beating up slowly against the westerly wind. At that moment the rending screech of the express pierced to his heart. Another moment and it must dash into the train driven by Duncan Urquhart.
Muckle Alick found the points open. Throwing his great crowbar forward he inserted it beneath the length of rail, and with the strength of Samson, he moved the whole section over to the other side. He could not lock the points, of course, as the signal-man could have done. But Alick held them tight with his lever, while the heavy goods train bumped along, passing over the improperly joined points with a terrible jolting which almost dislocated his arms. But still Muckle Alick held on. For he knew that the lives of a hundred men and women depended upon the sureness of his hand.
The goods train was a long one and it jolted slowly past. It was not till he saw the hind light of the guard's van passing him with a swing, that Muckle Alick's heart gave a joyful leap. But just as the last van went past, with a roar and a rush of fire-lighted smoke the express leaped by. A moment before the released points had flown back to their place. The way was clear. But something, it is thought the iron framework of the catcher on the postal car, caught Muckle Alick and jerked him thirty yards from where he had been standing. Without so much as a quiver, the express flew out again into the dark, her whistle screaming a death-knell and the back tempest hurtling behind her.
No one had seen Muckle Alick. None knew of his deed of heroism, save only Duncan Urquhart, who, unconscious of danger, [286]had cried cheerfully as he passed, "What are ye hanging on to a post there for, Alick?"
It was fully a quarter of an hour later that Urquhart went to look for Muckle Alick. He thought he would walk the first part of his way home with him. It was always wholesome and always cheery to walk with Muckle Alick, even when he was going home from a long spell of overtime.
At that moment the station master woke up with a start. It was twenty minutes past ten. The Express——!
He rushed out. The signal box was quite dark. Duncan Urquhart was coming up the platform alone with his coat over his arm. He called out to the station master:
"Is your signal-man deid, or only sleepin'?"
A few moments after James Cannon awoke from a pleasant dream of the Ross Lighthouse.
"Get up, man!" cried the station master, standing over him with a lantern, "God kens how many lives ye hae lost through your ill deeds!"
Dazed and bewildered, James Cannon arose to the damning fact that the boat train was past, and he knew well that he had never altered the signals or set the points.
Five minutes later Duncan Urquhart found Muckle Alick. He was lying half on and half over the embankment of the cattle shipping bank, where the express had tossed him like a feather.
"Oh, what's wrang, what's wrang, Alick?" cried Duncan Urquhart in terror.
"It's a' richt, Duncan," said Muckle Alick, slowly but very distinctly. "I gripped the points and held them till ye won by!"
"Can ye bide a minute, Alick?" said Duncan tenderly.
[287]
"Ow, aye," said the wounded man, "dinna fash yoursel'. There's nae hurry—Mirren wasna' expectin' me!"
Faster far than his own train had passed the points, Duncan Urquhart sped back to the station.
"Alick's lying killed doon on the cattle bank!" he cried. "Help us wi' that board!"
And, rushing into the empty waiting-room, he laid hold of a newly-erected partition which had recently been set up to keep the draughts from the passengers.
It resisted his strength, but with the station master to help him, and a "One, Two, Three," it yielded, and the men tore down the platform with it.
With the help of poor, dazed James Cannon and another, they laid the giant tenderly upon it. But they had to wait for other two, hastily summoned from the nearest railway houses, before they dared try to lift Muckle Alick.
"Does it hurt, Alick?" asked Duncan of Inverness, gently, like a Highland man.
"It's no that sair," said Alick, as quietly, "but juist try no to be ower lang wi' me!"
They carried him to the left-luggage office, into which, a few weeks before, he had taken the children whom, at the peril of his life, he had saved from death. They were going to lay down the partition with its load upon the table on which he had been arranging the parcels half an hour before.
"Pit me on the bench," said Alick, calmly, "dinna meddle the parcels. They are a' ready to gang oot wi' the first delivery the morn."
So, even as he bade them, on the bench they laid Alick down. What like he was I know, but I am not going to tell. His wife, Mirren, might chance to read it.
There were tears running down Duncan Urquhart's face. The station master had already run for a doctor.
[288]
"Dinna greet, Duncan," said Alick. "The boat train won by a' richt, and I manned to haud the points for ye."
But Duncan Urquhart could answer him no word. In the corner sat James Cannon with his head on his hands, rocking himself to and fro in speechless agony of soul.
"Oh, I wuss it had been me," he wailed. "I wuss it had been me!"
"Hoot na, James," said Alick. "It's better as it is—ye hae a young family."
Then, as if he had been thinking it over—
"Duncan," he said, "Duncan, promise me this—ye'll no let Mirren see me. Mind ye, Mirren is no to see me. I dinna want her to think o' me like this.
"She was aye sae taen up aboot me, ye see," he added apologetically, after a little pause.
The doctor came. He bent over Alick. He moved him tenderly, this way and that. Then he ordered all out of the left-luggage office, except Duncan Urquhart and the station master's wife, a quiet motherly woman.
Then, while the doctor did his duty, Alick sank into a kind of stupor. Presently he woke from it with a little start.
"Doctor, is this you?" he said; "this is terrible kind o' ye. But it's a cauld nicht for you to be oot o' your bed so late—and you wi' a hoast!"
"Wheesht, Alick!" said the doctor. And said no more for a little. For, like every one else, he loved the soft-hearted giant.
Then Alick beckoned the station master to him from the door of the left-luggage office, where he stood nervously clasping and unclasping his hands. The station master came and bent his head.
"The boat train," whispered Muckle Alick, "ye'll hae to enter her in the shedule five meenites late. But ye [289]can say that she passed Netherby wi' the signals standing at clear."
He was silent a moment. Then he looked up again.
"Mind ye, there's to be nocht said aboot it in the papers. You'll see to that, will ye no? It's my wish. An' if the company likes to do aught, it'll aye be a help to Mirren."
There was a sound of sobbing at the door, and the station master shoved the youngest porter out on the platform with his foot.
"Has—ony—body gaen to tell Mirren?" asked Alick in a little.
The doctor nodded. He had, in fact, sent his own coachman to Sandyknowes with a gig.
"Puir Mirren," said Alick again, "I'm some dootsome that she'll tak' this hard. She was na looking for it, like."
He looked about apologetically again.
"She was that sair set on me, ye see—maybe wi' us haein' nae bairns, ye ken."
He was silent a little while, and then he said, more brightly, "There's three comed noo, though. Maybe they'll be a blessin' to her. The Lord sent them to her, I'm thinkin'. He wad ken o' this aforehand, nae doot!"
Suddenly he held up his hand, and there was a light shining like a lamp in his eyes.
"Hearken! that's the whistle!" he cried. "Are the signals clear?"
There was no train in the station nor near it.
Muckle Alick went on. He lifted his head and looked through the open door as one looks ahead under his hand when the sun is strong.
"I can see the distant signal. It is standing at clear!" he said, and sank back.
[290]
And thus the soul of Muckle Alick passed out of the station—with the distant signal standing at clear.
They brought the little wife in to him a quarter of an hour after. Already her face seemed to have shrunk to half its size and was paler than Alick's own. The doctor had him wrapped delicately and reverently in the station master's wife's fairest linen. The face was untouched and beautiful, and as composed as it was on Sacrament Sabbaths when he carried in the elements at the head of the session, as it is the custom for the elders to do in the Cameronian Kirk.
His wife went up to him quietly and laid her hand on his broad white brow. "My man—my ain man!" she said. And she bent down and touched it, not with her lips but with her cheek.
She looked up at the station master's wife.
"He aye liked me to do that!" she said, smiling a little, as it were, bashfully.
And in all the room, where now stood ministers and doctors, men and women that loved him well, hers were the only dry eyes that dark midnight.
"I wad like to get him hame the nicht, if it's nae great trouble till ye," she said; "I think I wad be mair composed gin I had him hame to me the nicht!"
So they took her dead home to her to quiet Sandyknowes. They carried him through between the beds of dusky flowers and laid him in his own chamber. Then they left her alone. For so she desired it. The wandering children, Hugh and Gavin, were asleep in the next room. So Mirren watched her man all that night, and never took her eyes off the broad noble brow, save once when little Gavin woke and cried. Then she rose calmly and prepared him a bottle of milk, mixing it with especial care. As she did so she raised her eyes and looked out [291]into the dark. And there on the brae face was the light of the distant signal shining like a star in the midst of the brightening sky of morn.