THE OPEN DBAW.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 5804, 18 December 1886, Page 1

THE OPEN DBAW.

(New Tori Daily News.) " Now, promise me, Boyal ! Please promise!" Qrace Arden looked up into her lover's face with wistful blue eyes and cheeks ■tamed with crimson. Boyal Meriam looked at her with the laugh of conscious superiority. " What nonsense, Grace ! As if there were any real danger!" "There is always danger,- Boyal, in your business, and with — with that habit !" " Habit, Grade P Now yon are going a little too far. I don't drink any more than other men. It is not a confirmed habit with me, and never will be." J " Good-bye, Eoyal 1" " You won't kiss me ? Ton are vexed P" "Only sorry, Eoyal. Because I know that papa will never let me marry a man who drinks." Boyal Meriam turned on his heel and he strode away, muttering something about "narrow-minded old fools, who expected everyone to be cut after their own pattern." But he had walked only a little distance when the cloud cleared away from his face, and the old, careless, good-natured smile once more came back. " Dear little Grade ! " he said to himself. "Perhaps she's right, after all. I believe lam getting to be more fond of a stray glass than I ought to be, but of course there's no danger. A man can always control himself. Still, I'll go back to-morrow and make peace with the little blue-eyed kitten, and if she wants me to promise, why, I'll promise." The Shepherds' Arms was an unpretending little village hostelry, through whose drawn red curtains the evening lights shone cheerily, and Boyal Meriam'a boon companions welcomed him uproariously. " Your coming to the end of your rope, old fellow," said one. "The superintendent is going to strike everybody that drinks a social glasß off from the list. Says it ain't business- like — can't afford to run any risks." " I don't know what the world's coming to, for my part," looking into the bowl of his short black pipe. A man might as well be a slave and done with it." "I've heard something of it before," said Meriam, carelessly." " I don't know but what it was a wise enough regulation on the whole. But there's one thing certain ; I'll drink the superintendent's health to-night, if I never do again." A general laugh echoed this assertion of Soyal Meriam j and in the hoar or two that followed, poor Grace Arden's piteous request, Grace Arden's tear-brimming blue eyes, were entirely forgotten. "Drunk— l drunk! Never was more sober in my life. Yes, yes, I know if s time to start, and here I am fresh as a cricket." Boyal Meriam swung himself to his place on the glittering, fire-throated locomotive with the careless ease and lightness of a mountaineer." " Go ahead," he called out. The depfitr master looked curiously at him. " You may not be drunk," said he, sotto voce, "but you have been drinking, my fine fellow, and you'll get reported at headquarters before the world is twenty-four hoars older." 80 eaying',' he drew a little leather memo-randum-book out of his vest-pocket, and wrote down the words, " Meriam, engineer, Flying Dart," upon it, with the slow, mechanical accuracy of one who considers in his own mind. Meriam fully believed in his own assertion that he was not drunk. He had been drinking a good deal, but then he knew his head could dtand more than the average of brains. lie felt a sort of lightness— a jocular content — as he sat there at his po3t. The lights along the road sparkled more prominently than usual ; the stars seemed to shine with unwonted brightness, and once or twice he caught himself huskily answering someone who had not Bpoken. All of a sudden he grew sleepy — his brain seemed to become confused. " All right," said he—" all right. I'll lack the Flying Dart against any engine on the road ! Why, she couldn't go wrong if she was to try ! Are we — are we far from the drawbridge ?" The fireman suddenly started to his feet, with a hoarse, gaoping cry. " The signal !" shouted he. " The red light! Stop her, for God's sake! Sound down brakes ! We are on the bridge, and the draw ia open !" In less than a second the mists and drowsiness and fatal lethargy seemed to clear away from the engineer's brain, and he had fully comprehended the awful terror of their position— the express train rushing at dizzy speed toward the yawning gulf, beneath which lay the black river. The signal ! And he had not seen it. Mechanically he sounded the whistle, sharp and shrill— two brief, unearthly shrieks — and then sprang out into the darkness, through which the red light streamed like an eye of sullen fire ! He had done what he could to save the fated train, and he grasped blindly at the one chance in five hundred for his own life. He sprang, and striking against the beams lost all consciousness in the instant that the train skimmed by him, its long array of lights gleaming and vanishing, and faces here and there looking out of the windows, all unconscious that they were going to death ! # # # * # A bleak December day, with the snowflakes clicking against the window-panes, a wood fire crackling on the hearth, and Grace Arden's light figure coming and going like a little brown-robed Sister of Charity— Boyal Meriam' s eyes vaguely took in these things, lying among his pillows, before he remembered Bemembered ! Kemembered that he was an outcast among men — a murderer ! " Grace," he gasped, " tell me ! How came I here ? How was I saved P" " They found you on the bridge, dear. Huah! You must not talk much. You are very weak and feeble. You were quite unconscious, and terribly bruised." " And— the train P Was it totally wrecked ?" " It was not wrecked at all," said Grace, with brightened face. " For the draw waa not open." " Not open ?" " No ; it had bees, but was jußt closed again, and the men had not yet taken down the open signal when the express rushed on without any warning whatever. They stopped it on the other side and missed you." " No one was killed then?" be shuddered, feeling as if a mountain of horror was lifted from his breast. "No one!" "Grace," he whispered, hoarsely, drawing her down to him, "I waa— drunk! If that train had been wrecked the blood of those helpless paasengere, men. women, and children, would have been on my head. God be thanked that He has not punished me as I deserve ! " Boyal Meriam, a prematurely old and crippled man, lived to atone for all the faults and follies of his youth. He never re-entered the old profession— he had not

nerve enough for that, he was wont to Bay, even if they would have trusted him again —but he worked hard and honestly for his bread, with Grace, hia wife, standing loyally by hia aide. And never in all the long years that followed did a drop of ardent spirits ever pass his lips. " I have had my jeason," he said.