ghastly details, and for a week all England
talked of Lewminster.

This engine-driver, as the 9.45 train neared Lewminster, saw the red
in the sky. And when he rushed into the station and drew up, he saw
that the country porters who stood about were white as corpses.

"What fire is that?" he asked one.

"'Tis the theayter! There's a hundred burnt a'ready, and the rest
treadin' each other's lives out while we stand talkin', to get 'pon
the roof and pitch theirselves over!"

Now the engine-driver's wife was going to the play that night, and he
knew it. She had met him at the station, and told him so, at midday.

But there was nobody to take the train on, if he stepped off the
engine; for his fireman was a young hand, and had been learning his
trade for less than three weeks.

So when the five minutes were up--or rather, ten, for the porters
were bewildered that night--this man went on out of the station into
the night. Just beyond the station the theatre was plain to see,
above the hill on his left, and the flames were leaping from the
roof; and he knew that his wife was there. But the train was never
taken down more steadily, nor did a single passenger guess what
manner of man was driving it.

At Drakeport, where his run ended, he stepped off the engine, walked
from the railway-sheds to his mother-in-law's, where he still lodged,
and went up-stairs to his bed without alarming a soul.

In the morning, at the usual hour, he was down at the station again,
washed and cleanly dressed. His fireman had the Galloper's engine
polished, fired up, and ready to start.

"Mornin'," he nodded, and looking into his driver's eyes, dropped the
handful of dirty lint with which he had been polishing. After
shuffling from foot to foot for a minute, he ended by climbing down
on the far side of the engine.

"Oldster," he said, "'tis mutiny p'raps; but s'help me, if I ride a
mile longside that new face o' your'n!"

"Maybe you're right," his superior answered wearily. "You'd best go
up to the office, and get somebody sent down i' my place. And while
you're there, you might get me a third-class for Lewminster."

So this man travelled up to Lewminster as passenger, and found his
young wife's body among the two score stretched in a stable-yard
behind the smoking theatre, waiting to be claimed. And the day after
the funeral he left the railway company's service. He had saved a
bit, enough to rent a small cottage two mile