alk changed to accidents. I asked if an
engineer plans ahead what he will do in a collision. It seemed
reasonable that a man always under such menace would have settled his
mind on some prospective action. But they laughed at the idea, and
declared that an engineer can no more tell how he will act in an
emergency than the ordinary citizen can say what he would do in a fire,
or how he would meet a burglar. One engineer would jump, another would
stick to his throttle, and the chances of being killed were as good one
way as the other.

[Illustration: "CONVICTS HAD REVOLVERS ALL RIGHT THAT TRIP AND DENNY
THREW UP HIS HANDS."]

The mention of a burglar led one of the new-comers to tell of William
Powell's adventure with some Sing Sing convicts. Powell was the oldest
engineer on the New York Central. He died a year ago, and this thing
happened back in the seventies. It seems there was a trestle over the
track about half a mile below the Sing Sing station, and on this trestle
some convicts working in the quarry used to run little cars loaded with
stone and dump them into the larger cars underneath. Of course, they
worked under the surveillance of well-armed guards.

On one occasion, however, four or five convicts out-witted the guards by
dropping from the trestle upon the tender of a moving locomotive, and
the first thing the engineer knew he was set upon by a band of desperate
men, who covered him and his fireman with revolvers. At the same moment
half a dozen shots rang out, and bullets came crashing through the cab
sides from the guards firing at random after the fleeing engine.
Altogether it was quite the reverse of pleasant for William Powell.

"Out you go now, quick!" said the convicts; "we'll run this engine
ourselves."

The engine was No. 105, Powell's pride and pet, and he could not bear to
have unregenerate hands laid upon her, so he spoke up very politely:
"Let me run her for you, gentlemen; I'll go wherever you say."

They agreed to this, and some distance down the line left the engine and
departed into the woods.

"And the joke of it was," concluded the narrator, "that the revolvers
those convicts had were made of wood painted black, and couldn't shoot
any more than the end of a broom! It was a big bluff, but it worked."

"Wasn't any bluff when Denny Cassin got held up at Sing Sing," said
another engineer. "Convicts had revolvers all right that trip, and Denny
threw up his hands same as any man would. Tha