en but a mad desire to flee.

Joshua Plumstead was in the nitrating-house alone. His helper had fled.
The roof timbers were crashing down about him. He heard the hiss of fire
and the shouts of workmen running. He knew that a second explosion might
come at any moment. There was danger from fire-brands and flying masses
of stone and iron, danger from the open troughs, danger from the near-by
houses. A shock, a spark anywhere here might mean the end.

Plumstead kept his eyes on the long thermometer that reached up from the
furious smoking mass of oil and acid. The mercury had crept up from
eighty-five to ninety, and was rising still. At ninety-five he knew the
nitroglycerin would take fire, probably explode, and nothing could save
it. The vat was seething with a full charge. Ninety-one! He shut off the
inflow of glycerin. Ninety-two! Something might be wrong with the coils
of ice-cold water that chill the vat down to safety. He opened the cocks
full. Crash! came a beam from overhead, and narrowly missed the gearing
of the agitating-blades. Were they to stop but for a single second, the
nitroglycerin would explode. He eased the bearings, turned on compressed
air, watched the thermometer--and waited.

[Illustration: "HE KNEW THAT A SECOND EXPLOSION MIGHT COME AT ANY
MOMENT."]

There was no other man but Plumstead who _did_ wait that day; there was
none but he whose waiting could avail anything. _He_ had to fight it out
alone with that ton of nitroglycerin, or run and let an explosion come
far worse than the other. He fought it out; he waited, and he won.
Gradually the thermometer dropped to eighty-five, to eighty, and the
danger was passed.

But--well, even the superintendent admitted that Joshua did a rather
fine thing here, while the workmen themselves and the people of Kenvil
shake their heads solemnly and vow that he saved the works.

THE LOCOMOTIVE ENGINEER

I

HOW IT FEELS TO RIDE AT NIGHT ON A LOCOMOTIVE GOING NINETY MILES AN HOUR

IT is 8.30 P.M., any night you please, and for miles through the yards
of East Chicago lights are swinging, semaphore arms are moving, men in
clicking signal-towers are juggling with electric buttons and pneumatic
levers, target lights on a hundred switches are changing from red to
green, from green to red; everything is clear, everything is all right,
the Lake Shore Mail is coming, with eighty tons of letters and papers in
its pouches. Relays of engines and engineer