Plot Summary

Ivan Perepasov has been serving at the railway station as a pointsman for twenty-two years. It seemed to him that all he could do was run along the arrows, give signals, light lanterns. The shift was coming to an end, Ivan hurried home, where his wife and eight children were waiting for him. Suddenly it seemed to him that he had forgotten, after the passage of a freight train, to throw the switch lever onto the main track, along which the postal train was now rushing. Ivan, in despair, rushes onto the adjacent track and falls under a maneuvering locomotive...