t rose and walked rapidly about the room.

Suddenly Jim turned and, with his arm over his eyes, held out his hand
to the President.

"Good-by." Then he went out.

There was a curious smile on the faces of the Directors as the door
closed.

"Well, I never saw anything like that before," said one of them. The
President said nothing.

"Run to seed," quoted the oldest of the Directors, "rather good
expression!"

"Damned good seed, gentlemen," said the President, a little shortly.
"Duval and Upton.--That fellow's father was in my command. Died at
Gettysburg. He'd fight hell."

Jim got a place--brakeman on a freight-train.

That night Jim wrote a letter home. You'd have thought he had been
elected President.

It was a hard life: harder than most. The work was hard; the fare was
hard; the life was hard. Standing on top of rattling cars as they rushed
along in the night around curves, over bridges, through tunnels, with
the rain and snow pelting in your face, and the tops as slippery as ice.
There was excitement about it, too: a sense of risk and danger. Jim did
not mind it much. He thought of his mother and Kitty.

There was a freemasonry among the men. All knew each other; hated or
liked each other; nothing negative about it.

It was a bad road. Worse than the average. Twice the amount of traffic
was done on the single track that should have been done. Result was
men were ground up--more than on most roads. More men were killed in
proportion to the number employed than were killed in service during the
war. The _esprit de corps_ was strong. Men stood by their trains and
by each other. When a man left his engine in sight of trouble, the
authorities might not know about it, but the men did. Unless there was
cause he had to leave. Sam Wray left his engine in sight of a broken
bridge after he reversed. The engine stopped on the track. The officers
never knew of it; but Wray and his fireman both changed to another road.
When a man even got shaky and began to run easy, the superintendent
might not mind it; but the men did: he had to go. A man had to have not
only courage but nerve.

Jim was not especially popular among men. He was reserved, slow,
awkward. He was "pious" (that is, did not swear). He was "stuck up" (did
not tell "funny things," by which was meant vulgar stories; nor laugh at
them either). And according to Dick Rail, he was "stingy as h--l."

These things were not calculated to make him popular, and h