The lad hesitated, wavered, then gave his head a rather defiant toss, and exclaiming, half aloud, "Sorry; but I'm in a hurry, and I can save ten minutes by you," walked forward into the smoky gloom before him, leaving sunlight and safety behind his back.
Cadmus was at first rather surprised to find his novel journey less odd and disagreeable than he had anticipated. There was very little smoke in the tunnel at so short a distance from one of its mouths. Daylight straggled in behind the boy's back, lighting up the road-bed with a gray distinctness. It brought out deep black shadows along the jagged walls of rock, and turned the rails before him to polished silver ribbons. Cadmus walked inward as fast as he could; occasionally he ran. By-and-by he noticed a curious sight upon turning his head. Far behind him lay the entrance by which he had come in, now dwindled to a third of its size, and with the air and landscape outside of it become a bright orange--an effect sometimes noticeable if one is well within the interior of a tunnel and looks outward. But the light amounted to worse than none by this time. Cadmus could not see his footing after a few yards further. He began stumbling badly in another minute. Hark! What was that low dull rattle that echoed to the boy's ears? The sound increased to a roll, then to a booming roar. A train was on its way toward him from daylight. From which end was it approaching? Cadmus dared not stop to think; he leaped aside, put out his hand, and felt the rough rocky wall.
He pressed himself closely against this, his heart thumping until he could scarcely stand. Was there space enough for safety between himself and the train rushing down toward him? He dared not try to determine now, for his ears were stunned, his breath taken away, as, ringing, hissing, and thundering in the darkness, what must have been a heavy freight train roared past the boy. Half choked with smoke, shaking in every limb and nerve, the unlucky lad tottered from his terribly narrow station, and began running forward as well as he might. Never before had he imagined how terrible a thing was a train of cars at full speed. He shook with terror at the idea of meeting another. A quarter of a mile before him yet!