ahead to some station with an open siding and ordered a switch set to derail and smash the runaway; but of course Min shew couldn't do that, with Old Tim's daughter sitting there beside him, crying quietly with her face in her hands.

It was plain by the look of him that he knew fully the size of the frightful job he had undertaken. With his near-sighted eyes glued upon the train-sheet, he was picking up the various trains in transit and providing for their side-tracking. It was blind work-horribly blind, since he had no means of determining the speed of the runaway. But if he were excited or rattled it was all on the inside. Once in a while I could hear his teeth come together with a little click, but that was all. At Oberville, twenty miles out, a westbound freight, which the flying engine was due to overtake, had a close call. But a minute later Oberville reported that the freight had the siding and that the light engine was coming around the curve below the station. At Mauryburg, twelve miles farther along, Minshew caught and held and side-tracked the east-bound night passenger. Beyond that there was a freight moving eastward in three sections. This presented a much more difficult problem, but the new quick deliberation was equal to it. Check me from the time-card!" snapped Minshew to me, and almost before I could do it he had caught and held up each of the three moving sections, and once more the track was clear ahead of the maniac.

As long as there are men to gather in freight-offices and switch-shanties on the old Extension there will be some to tell the thrilling story of how John Minshew fought that night to save poor old Tim Gallagher and all the others whose lives Tim was threatening. To me, standing at the back of his chair, it seemed as if the fight went on for uncounted hours, but of course it didn't. Minshew was only fighting for time. Tim was alone on the runaway, and in the nature of things he couldn't be both fireman and engineer on a big "Pacific type" running at full speed for many hours or miles. In time his steam would run down and the engine would stop; and I guess Minshew was praying, with Kittie and me, that the stop would happen at some station where

there would be somebody to get hold of Tim.

That, luckily for all concerned, was exactly what did happen. At five minutes after midnight the big engine, with her steam all but gone, came limping into Buford, the "pusher" station at the foot of Horse Mountain grade, fifty-five miles west, with a wizened little Irishman asleep on the right-hand seat. We got the story of it a few minutes later from Matt Burke, the pusher-station foreman.

Tim had been taken off and put to bed in the bunk-house and the engine had been looked over and found to be unhurt by the furious run.

Minshew gave the order to have the engine turned and sent back to Forty Rod as first section of Train 18, slipping in a word to Burke to have Tim looked after and kept away from the whiskey until he was himself again and able to come home. By that time Shaughnessy, our night round-house foreman, had come up-stairs to report that he was shy an engine the engine that was bulletined to take the "Flyer" west at 1.20. Minshew gave one glance at the girl sitting like a graven image beside him; then he climbed into the breach like a man and a lover.

"If anybody should ask you, Shaughnessy, you might say that there was an accident of some kind on the 369— throttle jumped open or something of that sort. She got away from the coalchutes and kept on going till she ran out of steam. Nobody's hurt, and this is a case of the least said the soonest mended. Get the 371 out for the 'Flyer,' and let it go at that."

Shaughnessy was gone, there was a lull in the wire-chatter, and I had slipped over to my corner to get my hat and coat, when the girl in the chair beside Minshew spoke up for the first time since the hairraising fight had begun.

"You tried to cover it up with Mike Shaughnessy," she said, "but it's no use. Everybody will know it to-morrow. And you mustn't lie to the bosses, John."

Minshew was staring at her gravely. "I'd lie about it in a minute if it would do any good; you know I would, Kittie."

"Don't I know it?" she flashed back. And then: "We'll just be dropping out, quiet like, the two of us. Daddy Tim

You're climbing fast now, and you'll be climbing high before you're through. Would I be letting you marry Tim Gallagher's girl to be going around begging everybody's pardon for it one day when you've climbed out at the top? 'Tis not that way that an Irish girl loves, John!" I sure felt like a dog sitting there like a bump on a log and listening to all this, but I couldn't get away without going right past them. Minshew stood up and put his hand, sort of fatherly like, on the bowed head with its shining, jet-black hair.

"That's enough," he said quietly. "We're going to hit the hill road together, Kittie girl, and you'll go up it faster and farther than ever I shall. More than that, I'm going to need you every foot of the way. You told me once that I'd got to have something to live up to, and it's so."

She was laughing now, and her face was fairly radiant when she twisted her head to one side to look up at him.

"You have your reputation, John dear; you got it that day when you jumped into the lake after Lettie Brannan!" Then, with the black eyes flashing soberly: "She has no poor, broken-down old father to be a drag on the man that marries her, John."

"Never mind the father part of it; together we'll be big enough for that, too. Besides, I didn't jump in after LettieI fell in."

She flicked the fatherly hand aside and sprang up to stand facing him.

"Wait!" she panted. "You'll never want to be marrying me when I tell you the truth, John! I saw you were asleep like, and I wanted, that hard, to do something that would shake you alive. 'Twas I that pushed you in, John!"

Minshew's smile was a cross between a good-natured grin and the ecstatic kind. "Pshaw!" he burbled gravely; "I've known that all along." And then, quite as gravely, he took her in his arms and kissed her.

We are billetted in a big farm-house surrounded by green fields of grain and grass. Scattered all around are small villages, now full of troops, and the whole atmosphere is one of agricultural peace and plenty. But, in the distance, the big guns at the fighting front rumble and roll exactly like summer thunder. Last Saturday and Sunday they never stopped night or day. It was one continuous rattle and roar, reminding me, more than anything else, of a battery of stamps in a big stamp mill or a gold mine. In the night you could see the shells bursting high up in the sky. In the evenings, after sun-down, in the long twilight, if the weather is clear and fine, our aeroplanes, four or five at a time, come out to scout. They fly apparently where they please with the shells bursting about them. With my Zeiss glasses you can see a lot of the fun. No shell ever seems to do them any harm and it is a beautiful thing to watch. Dotted about, generally singly, in the fields of grain, or along the hedge rows in the green turf, are graves of British regulars, most of them Rifle Brigade men, all of whom seem to have been killed on October 13th, 1914, when the enemy was through this country with cavalry and some few machine guns. The French take good care of the graves and leave on them various articles of the man's equipment, such as his cap or knapsack or bandolier. All the farm people around tell us of the time last October when the Germans entered their houses demanding food for men and horses at pistol's point and leaving without paying for anything; besides other outrages not parliamentary. They seem not to have shot or killed people but they were in a hurry and could not stay long, arriving at 6 P. M. and leaving before dawn as a rule. Some of our men who were in the Boer War and are not much on education insist on speaking Boer Dutch or Taal to these French farmers, and are quite puzzled when they are not understood.

I have volunteered for the hand-grenade throwing section of the regiment. You have long known of my dislike for Germans and anything German so you will not be surprised. To blow up the beggars and to see them blow up oneself is a pleasure denied to most people.

Since I last wrote we have had a trying time. I went on guard that night (Sunday) and gathered very little sleep, and at 4:30 A. M. there came the order to march off at once. As we had already (the guard) lighted the cook's fires, we had tea ready and after a cup of boiling hot coffee we pulled out. Soon it began to rain and the rain stayed with us practically all day. We marched about II miles and, what with halts long and short, we did not arrive at the town we were destined for until about 12 A. M. All this time we were carrying the full pack, over 90 lbs. in weight, and we were wet and cold and mortal hungry. But most surprisingly cheerful, the men singing songs as the big guns sounded nearer and nearer. Very few men even fell out. These were a few of the sick and the sore footed. We were billeted in a big forge, and soon we fed and were busy cleaning water soaked rifles, as we did not know but what we might go right on into the thick of it. The town was literally full of troops. Regulars, Indians, artillery, transport in a never ending shifting stream. All the while the guns banged and whacked away and rattled the windows. At one place, with my glasses, I saw shells bursting. Several bands of German prisoners were marched by under guard.

Miserable looking men, some wounded and bandaged, all muddy and all yellow with lyddite fumes. Their physique was not bad on the whole but their type of face was evil. I was told they were Bavarian and Saxons. I saw one officer with his Iron Cross of course. About 6 P. M. we marched off again, a little over a mile, to a really dirty farm, where troops have been billeted for months, I should think, and here we are yet. The rain has hardly stopped and the place is an eye sore.

Yesterday afternoon the bomb-throwers were called out for a lesson and a lecture. It seems to be quite a ticklish business needing care and accuracy, and the actual throwing will require practice