such anxieties
prevailed. Therefore Mr. Moss fell back upon the less exciting pastime
of a perspiry afternoon among his potatoes and other vegetable
luxuries.

He was hoeing the rows of potatoes with a sort of dogged determination
to find interest in the work. He believed that physical effort was the
only safety-valve for healthy feelings all too long bottled up. Even
the streaming sweat suggested to him a feeling that it was at least
hygienic, although the moist mixture of muddy consistency upon his
face, merging with the growth of three days' beard, left his
appearance something more than a blot upon the general view.

Just now he had nothing to disturb the blank of his mind. The only
possible interruption to the work in hand, of an official character,
was the passing of a local freight train. However, a local freight was
a matter of no importance whatever. It might come to-day, or it might
come to-morrow. He would signal it through in due course, after that
he didn't much care what happened to it.

The potatoes fully occupied him, and as he came to the end of each row
he took the opportunity of straightening out the crick in his back,
and gazing upon his handiwork with the look of a man who feels he has
surely earned his own admiration.

Once he varied this procedure by glancing up while still in the middle
of a row. His glance was sharp and startled. He had heard an
unaccustomed sound, distinct but distant. It seemed to him that a
horse had neighed. There came an answering neigh. It was quite
disturbing.

A long and careful scrutiny of the plains in every direction, however,
left him with a feeling of doubt. There was no horse in sight
anywhere, and the great hills adjacent offered no inducement
whatsoever for any straying quadruped. He assured himself that the
solitude of his life was rendering him fanciful, and forthwith
returned to his work.

For some time the measured stroke of his hoe clanked upon the baking
soil, and later on he paused to fill and light his pipe. He had just
cut the flakes of tobacco from his plug, and was rolling them in the
palms of his hands, when the thought occurred to him to glance at the
time. His great coin-silver timepiece pointed the hour when he felt he
might safely signal the freight train through.

Lounging round to the front of the station building he walked down the
track to the foot of the semaphore, and flung the rusty lever over.
His action expressed something of th