The President's Special

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The day operator at Willoughby Station comes on duty and finds Collins, the night man, quite ill. Collins leaves for home, promising to be at work again in the evening. This he fails to do and the day operator is forced to stick at his post for forty-eight hours. His wife calls at midnight to bring him his lunch and endeavors to cheer him up while he is struggling with the powers of sleep. At this juncture he receives a telegraph message instructing him to flag passenger train No. 9 and sidetrack same, giving the President's special the right of way on the track. This the wife learns and leaves. The operator, left alone, begins a terrible struggle to keep awake. At last nature conquers will power. We see the operator's head fall to his arm, and sweet sleep reigns supreme. Suddenly breaking the silence of the night, passenger train No. 9 dashes by. The rattle of the wheels awakes the sleeping man, but too late! He has paid the awful price of a moment's sleep. To his mind come constantly the words, "A wreck, a wreck, and I am the guilty man." His dream becomes confused. He sees the trains rushing down the track towards each other, an awful crash; and all is darkness before him! Now come the victims of his guilt, accusing him of his crime, mocking and jeering at him. Death seems to be the only solution to shut them from his sight. He draws forth the revolver and, as he raises the weapon to fire, his senses reel and he falls fainting to the floor. Suddenly the scene changes to the quiet of his home. His child is saying her midnight prayers, in the midst of which his wife hears the long, low whistle of' No. 9 coming down the track. In a second she realizes that her husband has failed to flag the express. Grabbing up a red table cloth, she dashes from the house to stop the train, but it is too late, the train has passed. Fate at this moment takes up the destiny of lives and brings down the road an automobile. The frantic woman hails the ear, and in a spirit of desperation tells what is needed to save hundreds of lives; the train must be stopped. A second of explanation, and the big touring car is seen dashing down the road at the rate of sixty miles an hour after the express train. Then follows a race so thrilling that few spectators have ever witnessed its equal on the moving picture canvas. The train is reached, the engineer sees the signal and stops the express. A wreck has been averted, and the wife of the telegraph operator at Willoughhy Station becomes the heroine of a splendid, dramatic moving picture.