The Man on the Night Train
A stranger, a storm, and a familiar crest
Winter came early that year, and the hills were covered in hard snow.
One night a storm was blowing, and the wires screamed in the wind.
Thomas was checking the signals when the began to tap urgently.
The line ahead was blocked, and a night train was slowing to a .
Through the snow he saw its lamps, glowing where the track curved.
The passengers waited inside while the crew cleared a fallen tree.
As Thomas was crossing the track, he noticed a man standing alone.
The stranger was shivering badly, and his thin coat was through.
He had stepped down from the stopped train and would not go back.
Thomas brought him into the warm signal box, where the stove still burned.
The man spoke little English and kept glancing nervously at the door.
There was a moment when their eyes met, and neither of them spoke.
While the stranger was drying his coat, a small case fell from his arm.
It opened, and a folded cloth slipped out onto the wooden floor.
On the cloth was a , stitched in faded gold and deep red.
Thomas had seen that same once before, inside the old logbook.
The former signalman had drawn it carefully on an early, undamaged page.
There was a night, years ago perhaps, when these two men had met.
The stranger saw Thomas staring and quickly hid the cloth away.
"You knew him," Thomas said, "the man who worked here before me."
The stranger's face changed, and for a moment he stopped shivering.
Outside, the storm was growing louder, shaking the frozen window frames.
The night train's whistle blew, calling the lost passenger back aboard.
The man rose at once and moved quickly toward the swinging door.
At the he turned and whispered a single name Thomas did not know.