part two if anyone had been watching as the eight-thirty train hissed into the station and ground to a steaming halt , they would n't have noticed anything out of the ordinary about it : not about the conductors and porters who wrestled open its latches and threw back its doors ; not about the mass of men and women , some in military dress , who streamed out and disappeared into the swarming crowd ; not even about the eight weary children who filed heavily from one of its first-class cars and stood blinking in the hazy light of the platform , their backs pressed together in a protective circle , dazed by the cathedral of noise and smoke in which they found themselves .