"But he don't care. He lets 'em cuss. He's the Czar - KingBoss! He says 'Please,' and then they kneel down an' pray. There's three or four strings o' to-day's freight to be pulled before he can attend to them. When he waves his hand that way, things happen."

A string of loaded cars slid out down the track, and a string of empties took their place. Bales, crates, boxes, jars, carboys, frails, cases, and packages flew into them from the freight-house as though the cars had been magnets and they iron filings.

"Ki-yah!" shrieked little Poney. "Ain't it great?'

A purple-faced truckman shouldered his way to the yard-master, and shook his fist under his nose. The yard-master never looked up from his bundle of freight-receipts. He crooked his forefinger slightly, and a tall young man in a red shirt, lounging carelessly beside him, hit the truckman under the left ear, so that he dropped, quivering and clucking, on a hay-bale.

"Eleven, seven, ninety-seven, L. Y. S.; fourteen ought ought three; nineteen thirteen; one one four; seventeen ought twenty-one M. B.; and the ten west-bound. All straight except the two last. Cut 'em off at the junction. An' that's all right. Pull that string." The yard-master, with mild blue eyes, looked out over the howling truck

men at the waters in the moonlight beyond, and hummed:

"All things bright and beautiful,

All creatures great and small,

All things wise and wonderful,

The Lawd Gawd He made all !"

.007 moved out the cars and delivered them to the regular road-engine. He had never felt quite so limp in his life before.

66

Curious, ain't it?" said Poney, puffing, on the next track. "You an' me, if we got that man under our bumpers, we'd work him into red waste an' not know what we'd done; but — up there — with the steam hummin' in his boiler that awful

quiet way...

"I know," said .007.

"Makes me feel as if I'd dropped my fire an' was getting cold. He is the greatest man on earth."

They were at the far north end of the yard now, under a switch-tower, looking down on the fourtrack way of the main traffic. The Boston Compound was to haul .007's string to some far-away northern junction over an indifferent road-bed, and she mourned aloud for the ninety-six-pound rails of the B. & A.

"You're young; you're young," she coughed. "You don't realise your responsibilities."

"Yes, he does," said Poney, sharply; “but he don't lie down under 'em." Then, with a side

spurt of steam, exactly like a tough spitting: "There ain't more than fifteen thousand dollars' worth o' freight behind her anyway, and she goes on as if 'twere a hundred thousandsame as the Mogul's. Excuse me, madam, but you've the track. . . She's stuck on a dead-centre again-bein' specially designed

not to."

The Compound crawled across the tracks on a long slant, groaning horribly at each switch, and moving like a cow in a snow-drift. There was a little pause along the yard after her tail-lights had disappeared; switches locked crisply, and every one seemed to be waiting.

"Now I'll show you something worth," said Poney. "When the Purple Emperor ain't on time, it's about time to amend the Constitution. The first stroke of twelve is—"

66

"Boom!" went the clock in the big yard-tower, and far away .007 heard a full, vibrating "Tab! Tab! Tab!" A headlight twinkled on the horizon like a star, grew an overpowering blaze, and whooped up the humming track to the roaring music of a happy giant's song:

"With a michnai — ghignai — shtingal! Yah! Yah! Yah! zwei - drei Mutter! Yah! Yah! Yah!

Ein

She climb upon der shteeple,

Und she frighten all der people.

Singin' michnai-ghignai - shtingal! Yah! Yah!"

The last defiant "yah! yah!" was delivered a mile and a half beyond the passenger-depot; but .007 had caught one glimpse of the superb sixwheeled-coupled racing-locomotive, who hauled the pride and glory of the road—the gilt-edged Purple Emperor, the millionaires' south-bound express, laying the miles over his shoulder as a man peels a shaving from a soft board. The rest was a blur of maroon enamel, a bar of white light from the electrics in the cars, and a flicker of nickel-plated hand-rail on the rear platform.

"Ooh!" said .007.

"Seventy-five miles an hour these five miles. Baths, I've heard; barber's shop; ticker; and a library and the rest to match. Yes, sir; seventyfive an hour! But he'll talk to you in the roundhouse just as democratic as I would. And I— cuss my wheel-base! - I'd kick clean off the track at half his gait. He's the Master of our Lodge. Cleans up at our house. I'll introdooce you some day. He's worth knowin'! There ain't many can sing that song, either."

He

.007 was too full of emotions to answer. did not hear a raging of telephone-bells in the switch-tower, nor the man, as he leaned out and called to .007's engineer: "Got any steam?"

"Nough to run her a hundred mile out o' this, if I could," said the engineer, who belonged to the open road and hated switching.

"Then get. The Flying Freight's ditched forty mile out, with fifty rod o' track ploughed up. No; no one's hurt, but both tracks are blocked. Lucky the wreckin'-car an' derrick are this end of the yard. Crew'll be along in a minute. Hurry! You've the track."

66

'Well, I could jest kick my little sawed-off self," said Poney, as .007 was backed, with a bang, on to a grim and grimy car like a caboose, but full of tools-a flat-car and a derrick behind it. "Some folks are one thing, and some are another; but you're in luck, kid. They push a wrecking-car. Now, don't get rattled. Your wheel-base will keep you on the track, and there ain't any curves worth mentionin'. Oh, say! Comanche told me there's one section o' saw-edged track that's liable to jounce ye a little. Fifteen an' a half out, after the grade at Jackson's crossin'. You'll know it by a farm-house an' a windmill an' five maples in the dooryard. 'Windmill's west o' the maples. An' there's an eighty-foot iron bridge in the middle o' that section with no guard-rails. See you later. Luck!"

Before he knew well what had happened, .007 was flying up the track into the dumb, dark world. Then fears of the night beset him. He remembered all he had ever heard of landslides, rain-piled boulders, blown trees, and strayed cattle, all that the Boston Compound had ever said of responsi