One evening Alec Trenholme sat down to write to his brother.

Bates had urged him to write, and, after a due interval, of his own accord he wrote.

The urging and the writing had a certain relation of cause and effect, but the writer did not think so.

Also, the letter he wrote was very different from the document of penitence and recantation that Bates had advised, and now supposed him to be writing.
He gave a brief account of what he had done before he accepted the post of station-master at Turrifs Station, and then, "I liked it well enough," he wrote, "until one night a queer thing happened.

As evening came on, a man drove up bringing a coffin to be sent by train to the next village for burial.