n had flashed out to every division
of the various brotherhoods in the United States, Canada and Mexico, and
that a hundred thousand men and women would curse him that night before
they slept. He recollected what a vigorous striker he had been in the
beginning, how he had shouted, "Put him out" when the grand master had
said: "We are fighting a losing fight." He recalled with some bitterness
that their leader had looked him straight in the face when he added:
"And you who fight hardest here will be first to fall."

Then the face of his ten-year-old boy rose up before him, as it had
appeared from the street as he was leaving his home that evening, all
bruised and bleeding, with soiled and torn clothes, and he heard the
brave child's explanation: "Mamma, I wouldn't 'ave fit, but Dugan's boy
said my papa was a scab."[4]

[4] _The reader must pardon the use of this vulgar word, for we must use
it here or spoil this story._

Ordinarily it would require a great deal of "sand" to enable a man to
take out a train of this kind and run at such a high rate of speed
through a country full of anarchy, but in Cowels's case it required
nothing in the way of bravery. The great sacrifice he had made in
abandoning all that he held to be honorable,--the breaking of his vow,
the violation of his oath, had left him utterly indifferent to personal
danger.

It will be difficult for those unacquainted with the vast army of daily
toilers to appreciate the sufferings of this youthful engine-driver. A
king, who in a night's debauch loses an empire, loses no more than the
man who abandons all that he holds sacred. The struggles and
disappointments of the poor mean as much to them as similar sorrows mean
to the rich. The heart of a Bohemian milkmaid beats as wildly, aches as
sorely and breaks as surely as does the heart of the proudest princess.
This man and his wife, on the day they abandoned the cause of his
comrades--of the Brotherhood of which he had been so proud, of whose
strength he had boasted in many a crowded hall--made a great sacrifice.
To stand disgraced in their little world was to be disgraced before all
the people of all the earth, for in that world were the only people they
knew and cared about.

When the fireman returned to the cab he was almost overcome with terror.
More than once, as he worked his way along the side of the rolling,
plunging engine, he had nearly been dashed to death. The very machine,
he fancied, was striv