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I was standing with my back to the table, and just then I heard the despatcher say that the Flyer was thirty minutes late from the West. I put my hands quietly behind me and let them rest on the key. I then carefully opened the key, and had just begun to speak to the despatcher when one of the men suspected me and said to the leader, "Bill, watch that little cuss. He's monkeying with that instrument, and may give them warning."

I stopped, and was trying to look unconcerned, when" Bill" said that "to stop all further trouble" he would bind and gag me. Thereupon two of the men tied my hands in front of me, bound my legs securely, and then thrust a villainously dirty gag into my mouth. When this was done, "Bill" said, said, "Throw him across those instruments, so they will keep quiet." They flung me upon the table face downwards, so that the relay was just under my stomach, and of course my weight against the armature of the relay stopped the clicking of the sounder. As luck would have it, my left hand just touched the key, and I found I could move the hand slightly. So I opened the key, and then pretended to be choking and struggled quite a little. The leader came over, and, giving me a good stiff punch in the ribs, said with an oath, "Keep quiet, or we will make you." I became quiet again, and then, when the men were engaged in earnest conversation, I began to telegraph softly to the despatcher. The relay being shut off by my weight, there was no noise from the sounder, and I sent so slowly that the key was noiseless. Of course I did not know on whom I was breaking in, but I kept on. I told the exact state of affairs, and asked him either to tell the Flyer not to heed my red light and go on through, or, better, to send an armed posse from Kingsbury, twelve miles up the road. I repeated the message twice, so that he would be sure to hear it, and then trusted to luck.

The cords and gag were beginning to hurt, and my anxiety was very great. The minutes dragged slowly by, and I thought that hour never would end; but it did end at last, and all of a sudden I heard the long calliope whistle of the Flyer coming down the grade. This was followed by two short blasts, that showed she had seen my red light and was going to stop. My one thought was, "Has she been warned?" The men went out, leaving me helpless on the table. I heard the whistle of the air-brakes and knew that the train must be slowing up.

My anxiety was intense. Presently I heard her stop at the tank, and then, in about a second, I heard the liveliest fusillade that I had ever heard in my life. It was sweet music to my ears, I can tell you, for it indicated to me, what proved to be the fact, that a posse was on board and that the robbers were foiled. One of them was shot and two were captured, but "Bill," the leader, escaped. They had horses hitched to telegraph poles, and as "Bill" went by the office I heard him say, "I'll fix that operator, anyhow." Then bang, crash went the glass in the window, and a bullet buried itself in the table not two inches from my head. I was not exactly killed, but I was frightened so badly, and the strain was so great, that when the trainmen came in and released me I at once lost consciousness. When I came to, I was surrounded by a sympathetic crowd of passengers and trainmen, and a doctor who had happened to be on the train was pouring something down my throat that soon made me feel better. As soon as I had recovered myself a little, I telegraphed to the despatcher what had happened, and the Chief, who had been sent for in the meantime, told me to close up the office, come East on the Flyer, and report for duty in his office as a copy operator.

That is how I won my promotion. My change from Alfreda to the chief despatcher's office in Nicholson was indeed pleasant. The despatchers seemed somewhat dubious as to my ability to do the work, but I was rapidly improving in telegraphy, and, in spite of my extreme youth, I was allowed to remain. But railroad life is very uncertain, and one day we were very much surprised to hear that the road had gone into the hands of receivers. There were charges of mismanagement made against a number of the higher officials of the road, and one of the first things the receivers did was to have a “house-cleaning." The general manager, general superintendent, and a number of division superintendents resigned, and my friend the chief despatcher went with them. He was succeeded by the man who had been working the first "trick." This man did not like me, and, rather than give him the opportunity to dismiss me, I quit.

I was at home idle for a few weeks, and then, hearing that there might be an opening for operators on the C. Q. & R., a new road up in Nebraska, I once more started out. It was an all-night ride from my home to the division headquarters, and I thought I would be luxurious for once, and took a

sleeper. My berth was in the front end of the last car on the train. I retired about half-past ten and soon dropped off to sleep. I had been asleep perhaps two hours, when I was awakened by the car giving a violent lurch and then stopping suddenly. I was stunned and dazed for a moment, but I soon heard the cracking and breaking of timbers and the hissing of steam painfully near. I tried to rise up, but found that my narrow quarters would not permit of it. I then realized that we were wrecked. I felt that I had no bones broken, and my only fear was that the wreck would take fire. My fears were not groundless, for I soon smelled smoke. Then I felt that my time had come, and I had about given up hope when I heard the train-crew and passengers working above me, and in a few minutes I was taken out. It was an awful night-raining torrents and blowing almost a hurricane.

I now found that our train had stopped on account of a hot driving-box on the engine; the hind brakeman had been sent back to put out a flag, but, imagining there was nothing coming, he had neglected his duty, and before he knew it, a fast freight had come tearing around the bend, and a tail-end collision was the result. Seeing the awful effect of his neglect, the brakeman took out across the country and was never seen again. Two people in the sleeper were killed, and three were injured, while the engineer and the fireman of the freight were badly hurt by jumping.

legs wrapped around the pole. There was only one wire on this arm, so I had, comparatively speaking, plenty of room. On each of the other two cross-arms there were four wires, and there was also one strung along the tops of the poles. This made ten wires in all, and I had not the least idea which was the despatcher's wire. The pole was wet from the rain, which made the wires hot to handle. I had the fireman hand me up a piece of old wire he happened to have on the engine, and with it I made a flying cut in the third wire of the second cross-arm. Then with my eight feet of office wire I attached the little pocket instrument, and upon adjusting I found I was on a commercial wire. There I was, straddling a cross-arm between heaven and earth, with the instrument held on my knee, and totally ignorant of any of the calls or of the wire I was on. I yelled down to the conductor and asked him if he knew any of the calls. No; of course he didn't; and he was so excited that he didn't have sense enough to look on his time card, where the calls are always printed. Finally I opened my key, broke in on somebody, and said: "Wreck.' The answer came, "Sine." I said, "I haven't any sine. No. 2, on the C. K. & Q., has been wrecked out here, and I want the despatcher's office. Can you tell me if he is on this wire?"

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Now there is a vast difference between sending with a Bunnell key on a polished table, and sending with a pocket instrument As I stood watching the wrecked cars burn on your knee, especially when you are perched I heard the conductor say that he wished he on a thirty-foot telegraph pole, with the rain had an operator with him. I told him I was pouring down in torrents and the wind blowan operator, and he said that there was a ing almost a gale. Consequently, my sending pocket instrument in the baggage-car, and was pretty rocky," and some one came asked me if I would cut in on the wire and back at me with, Oh, get out, you big tell the despatcher of the wreck. I assented, ham." But I hung to it and made them and we went forward to the baggage-car, understand who I was and what I wanted. where he gave me a pair of pliers, a pocket The main office in Ouray cut me in on the instrument, and about eight feet of office despatcher's wire and I told him of the wire. I asked for a pair of climbers and wreck. He said that he suspected No. 2 was more office wire, but neither was to be had. in trouble, but he had no idea that it was Here, therefore, was a pretty problem. The so serious. He ordered out the wrecking telegraph poles were thirty feet high; how train, and had the doctors come with it; so was I to make a connection with only in about an hour our anxiety was relieved, eight feet of wire and no climbers? I the wounded were taken care of, and a put the instrument in my pocket, and undertook to "shin up" the pole as I used to do when I was a schoolboy. After many efforts I finally reached the bottom cross-arm, and seated myself on it with my EDITOR'S NOTE.-This article is the first of a series of real life stories, narratives of the personal experiences of a railroad telegrapher, which possess the same quality of stirring human interest that marked Herbert E. Hamblen's railroad articles.

decent wrecking office was put in. The division superintendent came out with the wrecking outfit, and for my services he offered me the day office at X- —, and I accepted.

EVICTION

AT DUNSHAUGHLIN BOG.

BY M. G. SAMPSON.

ALL the world knows Dunshaughlin Bog near the river Finn. Keep the roadway till you come to the Ballinasloe Lodge of Ballina Castle, then strike up into a bridle path at the left to Raphoe Mountain. From this, Ballina Castle can be seen-one of the most perfect castles in Donegal. The late Lord Ballina had passed here a life of festivity, but the present peer had left Ireland and established himself in India, and the domain was Dunmoyle's on a lease, the tenants paying Dunmoyle double what their fathers had paid Lord Ballina, and being consequently often in arrears.

Shannon and his wife had been all the way to Castlereagh, a good ten miles. Peggie had taken off her shoes, her temper proof against the wagon ruts, and was trying to pacify Shannon, a strong, off-hand looking young Irishman, for not having had a sixpence in his pocket to buy a half pound of tobacco.

"Lord bless me, Michael," Peggie said, stepping up close beside him, " isn't this for all the world like the evening the hailstorm come on and the car ran away with my father, and he coming home from McCoy's wedding, and a crowd of people in the road from Raphoe fair, and it all broke up with the stones going to be pounded, and the red shawl he had bought my mother in the gripe of the ditch, and she screaming, and the two wheels off and tattered, and a power of boys in the cabin drinking to Lord Ballina for letting the rent run on, and I dancing the ten toes off myself till the fiddle tumbled on the floor? Where in the world would you see an evening like that?"

Shannon threw Peggie a look.

"I mind well your father was bent that night, Peggie, you should settle on Rathdonnel. His tongue was wore to a shred trying to keep me away. My heart used be all as one as in my mouth when I'd see him teaching you toss up for fog-berries."

"God look down on us all," said Peggie, laughing a little. "Sure, Michael, it was hard for any of us to know what me poor father said that night. There wasn't a wiser

spoken man in the wide world, turn out who they could against him. Sure, my grandfather thought to make him a priest, but he was as good as dead that night with the whisky went down his throat, but he didn't care a brass button for Rathdonnel. He used to swear at him behind his back, only Rathdonnel hadn't the luck to hear him."

"Well, Peggie, you split Rathdonnel's heart into two halves," said Shannon.

A clear moon lit up the heavens when they reached Dunshaughlin Bog, on the edge of which stood their cabin. The door was open, and before it a pig lay sleeping in some freshturned earth. The beast raised himself on his hind legs, and looked at them.

Peggie was still almost a child in years, but the chubby round face of a boy peered above her shoulder. Shannon stooped slightly forward to enter the cabin door, threw off his cap, kicked his brogues from him, and seated himself on a three-legged stool close by the peat fire, a dreary look coming over his face. Peggie cleared her blue hooded cloak from a bramble, and perched herself on one corner of a deal table, heaped with potatoes upon which the earth was still moist, and began preparing them for a small pot beside the hod. She was a handsome, brave, warm-hearted young woman, with Irish blue eyes in which love seemed always stirring one who could walk almost as lightly over the thorns of life as over its flowers.

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"Michael," she said, pushing back the pig from the potatoes, what's become of Rooney, the chap with one eye who was working at the public?'

"Rooney is going to leave before this time next week for America," said Shannon. "Thank God," said Peggie," for he would only starve with the hunger if he staid here."

"I haven't a doubt, Peggie, he would," said Shannon, directing his eye to a gap in the window where a hen was roosting, half through the glass. "God knows if we all live a twelvemonth. It's little I thought more than the man never was born to be having my cow go round to the pound and

Dunmoyle, fractious old trader, buying her up, and you, Peggie, getting Poor Law relief. I see the day, and Lord Ballina living, when geese come as fast as we could eat them, and as good bacon as ever was made, let alone herrings, fresh and salt."

"Well, faith, Shannon, I wish some one would put a morsel of herring in my mouth," said Rathdonnel, who now came. An old Irish setter, which had walked sulkily step by step behind him, at the door of the cabin pushed through before him, casting his eye at a little snug place underneath the bed. "But if my stomach is empty, I have something down here in my pocket has cost me trouble enough. There it is, and it's from Dunmoyle "-holding up a summons. "Sure, the sheriff's been chasing after me this three days, and I running round and back and everywhere through Dunshaughlin Bog to keep out of his way. He is ferreting me out of my life calling for money. Rent must be paid with all of us," Rathdonnel said, with an oath that made Peggie cross herself, "or we'll be turned out. Sure, I never slept a wink all night, thinking of it, and my turf stack ready for the winter."

Peggie, who was hospitable in her own way, bestirred herself about the potatoes. Rathdonnel took them from her hand, and peeled off the skins with his fingers.

"God bless you both," she said, "don't be thinking of Dunmoyle now. Time enough and we put to our shifts with the agent in the cabin. I wish to the Lord I could drag Lord Ballina out of his grave; he'd rid you of summonses. But if I live till Monday, Michael, I go down to Raphoe and get the plait and bring it home and sew it into bonnets and hats. That will pay for the meal, and with the blessing of God, this weather will soon fill out the potatoes.'

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last night? It was a fine sight, the whole face of the earth lit up with one of Dunmoyle's barns. He may grind the face of us and bring a lawsuit every day in the week, but if it pleases Heaven spare us, it may cost him a plump bit in the end. I tell you, Peggie, a man that will dig up a fairy-mount, as Dunmoyle did, will have no luck. Sure, Lord Ballina's bailiff himself sent five women see could he stop it; but no, Dunmoyle took every grain of sand in it, and there isn't a Christian of us now knows where it is. Little wonder all to be upside down with us. The heathen, not know a fairy-mount when he sees it!"

The pig was trying all this time to get a potato from the baby. Peggie brought things to a crisis by firing one of Shannon's brogues over his head, whereupon the hungry pair began munching the potato together.

"Well, it would take a man twice as good as Dunmoyle to bring me before the justice," said Shannon, "and I'll not pay him a shilling either. Look at the bit of a rental he pays Lord Ballina and throw all the distress on us."

"Don't fret, Michael," said Peggie. "Sure, I dreamed in my bed last night you had ditching brought you in a pound."

"What in the devil's name, Peggie, makes you never know you are wet till you're drowned?" said Rathdonnel, springing impatiently to his feet. "Better have a shilling in your pocket than a pound in a dream. You mustn't want spirit."

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'There is a differ between wanting spirit and wanting sense," said Peggie, walking up to Shannon's side.

"I could give Dunmoyle my heart's blood if he'd do by me as he should," said Shannon: "treat me as if I was a man."

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'Every station has that right," put in Rathdonnel. "I lay a shilling, with all his pretensions, Dunmoyle's lived in a small cage sometime. It isn't all his life he sat with pipe in his mouth watching a dog-fox go by to the turnip field."

"He don't dare sit a horse hasn't plenty of bone beneath the knee," laughed Shannon. "Isn't so? Lord save us, Lord Ballina was a gentleman, and heart and soul a sportsman. He didn't care for money; he spent every week what Dunmoyle would spend in a year; he'd as soon pay twice over the worth of a thing; he lived like the men about him, and wasn't afraid if his checks once in a while did come back to him."

"You were only a small slip then," said Rathdonnel, turning an admiring glance

towards Peggie, "but Shannon and me mind the castle full every winter, hunting and shooting. You couldn't see the turnips for the partridges then, and the sky black with the woodcock. A Donegal linen draper's no hand at anything like that; he knows a five note and the ways of Dame Street, that's all. He sent Cusick off-I saw it myself to bring out some trash for the dairy, and he only paid him ninepence, made him carry three stone of earthenware and a slab of marble thirteen miles."

Shannon went presently to the baby, and laid one hand on his amber-tinted head. "Peggie," he said, "I'll wrack every stick in the place in smithereens before Dunmoyle shall touch the cabin, and I'll send him a civil message to say so."

"He'll be after giving you a skinful of broken bones to bring to Peggie," said Rathdonnel, rising from a rickety little stool on which he had maintained his balance with difficulty.

"I don't care a traneen if he does," said Shannon, querulously. Just then a blackbird gave his tally-ho of a whistle. "Talk of shooting," continued Shannon, "I am fond of shooting myself, but I never get a shot now without the risk of a jail. It would be cheaper for me to kill a cow than a woodcock; but I'll fly a salmon whensoever I get a spot that nobody sees me, and draw the river, too, with a line at night. Dunmoyle may call it poaching if he likes, but the Lord put the salmon in the Finn, and I see nothing amiss in me filling my basket; call it poaching if he likes. What would Dunmoyle care if I never snapped a cap or threw a line?"

Rathdonnel passed out from the cabin to the garden, where he came upon Peggie standing beside the pig. The moon was shining brightly, illuminating the old frieze clothes that were broken and full of patches. "I'm as bare of clothes," he said, when just abreast of her, "as the day I was born."

"God go with you, Rathdonnel," said Peggie, her blue eyes fixed gravely upon him. "I wish your soul was as bare of sin." Rathdonnel made no attempt to revolve this caustic characterization, but flicked off the ash of his pipe and laughed.

Troubles were soon flying all around Raphoe. A fresh constabulary had been brought, the sergeant had made some unwarranted arrests, and there were rumors of more to follow.

Peggie sat in the door of the cabin; the bog was silent; the only sound about the

place was the crowing of the baby. Suddenly she heard a step, and Shannon, who had come back from Raphoe, was in the garden.

"I've had a quarter of a mile to walk through a mob of men," he said. “I can tell you, Peggie, as we have supper. The constabulary drove to the station; some of them was leaving by the train. Half an hour after they left, Lackeym was near hamstringing Dunmoyle in the glen between him and Colonel Byrne.

Peggie had seated herself at the table with the baby upon her knee, one arm passed around his trim strong waist. Shannon glanced across at her. "I'm not sure, Peggie," he said, "but I'd be willing myself have the vagabonds beating the bog for me if I could know there was a bullet ready to be took out of Dunmoyle's ugly body."

"God help us, Michael," said Peggie, "don't you be swore to murder, or we'll all have bad luck and a curse. Look how the lot fell on McMann. Poor as we are, we can walk the high road now in the face of day; better that than trembling in a copse.

Shannon desisted from argument, but the ligaments of his neck were elongated as he thrust his head forward, conscious that Peggie was watching him. He was a man of excitable and affectionate nature, strong and brave, but he loathed his life as it was at present, and longed to strive after another.

Meetings were arranged for every night. The society met in Raphoe; the old room on the second floor of the public was always crowded, and hosts of little papers upon Dunmoyle's cruelty and Dunmoyle's injustice poured from the Raphoe press. Shiel, a cousin of Rathdonnel's, was shot in attempting to resist the service of a warrant for his arrest.

"Shiel was a fine, brave fellow," said Shannon. They were all just back from the churchyard. "God help us. To think of the children and only Bridget's two hands to work for them now!"

"I wonder will Dunmoyle look to her now?" said Mullins. "It's a pity Lord Ballina is not in it. He saw to every one. The blessings of the poor he had, carried his soul to heaven."

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