ing pushed toward the very switch he was
trying to reach. Even where he stood, struggling, he was not six feet
away from the switch-stand and safety. It seemed as if he could almost
reach it, as he writhed and twisted in his agony of apprehension.

He swung his lantern frantically, hoping to catch the eye of one of
the switching crew. But the only answer was the heavy pounding of the
loaded cars over the rail joints as they were pushed down upon the
helpless operator. Worst of all, while he was swinging his lantern
high in the air, the wind sucked the flame up into the globe and it
went out and left him helpless in the dark. Like the hare caught in
the steel teeth of a trap, the boy stood in the storm facing impending
death.

The bitterest feelings overwhelmed him. After coming hundreds of miles
and plunging into his work with the most complacent self-confidence,
he stood before the close of the first day about to be snuffed out of
existence as if he were no more than the flame of his useless lantern.
A cruel sense of pain oppressed his thoughts. Each second of
recollection seemed to cover the ground of years. The dull, heavy
jolting of the slow-coming cars shook the ground. He twisted and
writhed this way and that and cried out, knowing there were none to
hear him: the wind swept away his appeal upon its heedless wings; the
nearest car was almost upon him. Then a strange feeling of calm came
over him. He felt that death was knocking at his heart. Hope had gone,
and his lips were only moving in prayer, when a light flashed out of
the darkness at his very side and he felt himself seized as if by a
giant and wrenched away from where he stood and through the air.

He heard a quick exclamation, saw a lighted lantern fall to the
ground, felt a stinging pain in his right foot, and knew no more.

When he recovered consciousness, three lanterns shone in his eyes. He
was lying in the mud near the switch with the engine crew standing
over him. One of the men knelt at his side and he saw the thin, strong
features of a face he had seen among the railroad men, but one that he
knew then he was never to forget--the face of the yardmaster,
Callahan. Callahan knelt in the storm with a good-natured expression.
The men about the yardmaster were less kindly.

"Who are you, tar heels?" demanded the engineman angrily.

Resentment, which would have been quick in the operator a little
earlier, had died in the few moments in which he had