"You look at me," I said, forcing a smile, 'as if you had a dread of me.'
'I was doubtful,' he returned, 'whether I had seen you before.'
'Where?'
He pointed to the red light he had looked at.
'There?' I said.
Intently watchful of me, he replied (but without sound), Yes.
'My good fellow, what should I do there? However, be that as it may, I never was
there, you may swear.'
'I think I may,' he rejoined. 'Yes. I am sure I may.'
His manner cleared, like my own. He replied to my remarks with readiness, and in
well-chosen words. Had he much to do there? Yes; that was to say, he had
enough responsibility to bear; but exactness and watchfulness were what was
required of him, and of actual work--manual labour he had next to none. To
change that signal, to trim those lights, and to turn this iron handle now and then,
was all he had to do under that head. Regarding those many long and lonely
hours of which I seemed to make so much, he could only say that the routine of
his life had shaped itself into that form, and he had grown used to it. He had
taught himself a language down here--if only to know it by sight, and to have
formed his own crude ideas of its pronunciation, could be called learning it. He
had also worked at fractions and decimals, and tried a little algebra; but he was,
and had been as a boy, a poor hand at figures. Was it necessary for him when on
duty, always to remain in that channel of damp air, and could he never rise into
the sunshine from between those high stone walls? Why, that depended upon
times and circumstances. Under some conditions there would be less upon the
Line than under others, and the same held good as to certain hours of the day
and night. In bright weather, he did choose occasions for getting a little above
these lower shadows; but, being at all times liable to be called by his electric bell,
and at such times listening for it with redoubled anxiety, the relief was less than I
would suppose.
He took me into his box, where there was a fire, a desk for an official book in
which he had to make certain entries, a telegraphic instrument with its dial face
and needles, and the little bell of which he had spoken. On my trusting that he
would excuse the remark that he had been well-educated, and (I hoped I might
say without offence), perhaps educated above that station, he observed that
instances of slight incongruity in such-wise would rarely be found wanting among
large bodies of men; that he had heard it was so in workhouses, in the police
force, even in that last desperate resource, the army; and that he knew it was so,
more or less, in any great railway staff. He had been, when young (if I could
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