superintendent's face. "I've just been over the road--on the quiet. We
made eighty miles an hour with hardly a jolt!"

"Thankee, sir." A vague sense of joy touched Martin's aching
heart--only to depart.

"By the way, I noticed when I went through Northport that you've still
got that rotary where everybody can see it. I wish you'd move that
stuff--behind the roundhouse, out of sight."

Then Martin, heavier at heart than ever, went back to Northport. There
he said a quaking good-bye to his last hope--and executed the
president's orders, trying not to notice the grins of the "goat" crew
as they shunted the machinery into hiding. That night, after Jewel was
asleep, and the cat outside had ceased yowling, Martin climbed
stealthily out of bed and went on his knees, praying with all the
fervour of his big being for snow. And the prayer was answered----

By the worst rain that a Missouri January had known in years,
scattering the freshly tamped gravel, loosening the piles of trestles,
sending Martin forth once more to bawl his orders with the thunder of
the old days back at Glen Echo, even to leap side by side with the
track labourers, a tamping bar in his big hands, that one more blow
might be struck, one more impression made upon the giant task ahead.

January slid by; February went into the third week before the job was
finished. Martin looked at the sky with hopeful eyes. It was useless.
March the first--and Martin went into St. Louis to make his report,
and to spend an uneasy, restless night with the president in his room
at the hotel.

"It's only a few days off now"--they were in bed the next morning,
finishing the conversation begun the night before--"and I want you to
keep your eyes open every second! The mail marathon agreement reads
that no postponement can be made on account of physical or mechanical
obstacles. If a trestle should happen to go out--that would be our
finish."

"I wish"--Martin rolled out of bed and groped for his shoes--"we'd
been workin' with me old Blue Ribbon division. I know every foot o'
----"

"Oh, chase the Blue Ribbon division! Every time I see you you've got
something on your chest about it. Why, man, don't you know it's the
Blue Ribbon division that I'm counting on! Aldrich has let it run down
until it's worse than a hog trail. If they can make forty-five an hour
on it, I'm crazy. You can't win mail contracts with that. So forget
it. Anyhow, you're working for the Ozark Central no