vets,
greased the moving parts, and thoroughly cleansed it, outside and in.
Thus washed, cooled down, and purified, it was left to repose for five
or six hours preparatory to a renewal of its giant energies on the
following day.
Although we have somewhat exalted our pet locomotive of the "Flying
Dutchman," justice requires us to state that goods engines are more
gigantic and powerful, though they are not required to run so fast.
These engines are the heavy dray-horses of the line, express engines
being the racers. The latter can carry a _light_ _load_ of some seventy
or ninety tons on a good roadway at the rate of fifty miles an hour or
upwards. Goods engines of the most powerful class, on the other hand,
run at a much slower pace, but they drag with ease a load of from 300 to
350 tons, with which they can ascend steep gradients.
But whether light or heavy, strong or weak, all of them are subject to
the same laws. Though powerfully, they are delicately framed, and like
man himself, appear to be incapable of perfect action without obtaining
at the least one day of rest in the week.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN.
TREATS OF MRS. DURBY'S LOST PARCEL IN PARTICULAR, AND OF LOST-LUGGAGE IN
GENERAL.
We need scarcely say that Edwin Gurwood took a good deal of trouble to
find poor Mrs Durby's lost parcel. Had he known what its contents were
he might perhaps have done more. As she positively asserted that she
had carried it into the cab with her and had not left it in the train,
immediate application was not made at the station for it, but Edwin
drove her in a cab to Scotland Yard, and there introduced her to the
police officials whose duty it is to take charge of articles left in
cabs. Here she was asked to describe the appearance of her parcel,
which she did, by saying that it was a roundish one in brown paper,
fastened with a piece of string, and having the name of Durby written on
it in pencil, without any address.
Not feeling quite sure however of the fidelity of the nurse's memory,
Edwin then went to the station and made inquiries there, but on
application to the lost-luggage office no such parcel had been deposited
there. The reader may perhaps be surprised at this, as it is well-known
that every train is searched by the porters on its arrival at a
terminus, and all forgotten articles are conveyed at once to the
lost-luggage office. In the ordinary course of things Mrs Durby's
parcel would have been found and re
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