," he mumbled in a sort of wondering appeal, "is there any HUMAN
that would like to trust a feller so much as to risk another
ribcracking kick, just for the sake of being where he is? I almost
wish--"

But the wish was unspoken. Hazen was a true American husband. He feared
his wife more than he loved fairness. And his wife's glare was full
upon him. With a grunt he picked Lass up by the neck, tucked her under
his arm and made off through the dark.

He did not take the road toward the canal, however. Instead he made for
the railroad tracks. He remembered how, as a lad, he had once gotten
rid of a mangy cat, and he resolved to repeat the exploit. It was far
more merciful to the puppy--or at least, to Hazen's conscience,--than
to pitch Lass into the slimy canal with a stone tied to her neck.

A line of freight cars--"empties"--was on a siding, a short distance
above the station. Hazen walked along the track, trying the door of
each car he passed. The fourth he came to was unlocked. He slid back
the newly greased side door, thrust Lass into the chilly and black
interior and quickly slid shut the door behind her. Then with the silly
feeling of having committed a crime, he stumbled away through the
darkness at top speed.

A freight car has a myriad uses, beyond the carrying of legitimate
freight. From time immemorial, it has been a favorite repository for
all manner of illicit flotsam and jetsam human or otherwise.

Its popularity with tramps and similar derelicts has long been a theme
for comic paper and vaudeville jest. Though, heaven knows, the inside
of a moving box-car has few jocose features, except in the imagination
of humorous artist or vaudevillian!

But a far more frequent use for such cars has escaped the notice of the
public at large. As any old railroader can testify, trainhands are
forever finding in box-cars every genus and species of stray.

These finds range all the way from cats and dogs and discarded white
rabbits and canaries, to goats. Dozens of babies have been discovered,
wailing and deserted, in box-car recesses; perhaps a hundred miles from
the siding where, furtively, the tiny human bundle was thrust inside
some conveniently unlatched side door.

A freight train offers glittering chances for the disposal of the
Unwanted. More than once a slain man or woman has been sent along the
line, in this grisly but effective fashion, far beyond the reach of
recognition.

Hazen had done nothing origi