y, sweating, half-clad men at work there.

Above him, at the head of the ladder he had just descended, a pair of
shining eyes glared down, but he saw them not. He had not observed a
cleaner who was at work on the machinery in the engine-room, and who
kept his hat pulled over his eyes till Frank departed.

The blackened stokers looked like grim demons of the fiery pit as they
labored at the coal, which they were shoveling into the mouths of the
greedy furnaces.

The shifting glow was caused by the opening and closing of the furnace
doors, which clanged and rang.

For a moment the pit below would seem shrouded in almost Stygian
darkness, save for some bar of light that gleamed out from a crack or
draft, and then there would be a rattle of iron and a flare of blood-red
light that came with the flinging open of a furnace door.

In the glare of light the bare-armed, dirt-grimed stokers would shovel,
shovel, shovel, till it seemed a wonder that the fire was not completely
deadened by so much coal.

Sometimes the doors of all the furnaces would seem open at once, and the
glare and heat that came up from the place was something awful.

Merry wondered how human beings could live down there in that terrible
place.

Some of the men were raking out ashes and hoisting it by means of a
mechanism provided for the purpose.

Frank pitied the poor creatures who were forced to work down in that
place. Yet he remembered it was not so many months since he had applied
for the position of wiper in an engine round-house, obtained the job,
and worked there with the grimiest and lowest employees of the railroad.

There was something fascinating in the black pit and the grimy men who
labored down there in the glare and heat. Frank was so absorbed that he
heard no sound, received no warning of danger.

Merry leaned out over the edge of the iron grating. Something struck on
his back, he was clutched, thrust out, hurled from the grating!

It was done in a twinkling. He could not defend himself, but he made a
clutch to save himself, caught something, swung in, struck against the
iron ladder, and went tumbling and sliding downward.

At the moment when Frank was attacked, a glare of light had filled the
pit. One of the stokers had turned his back to the gleaming mouths of
the furnaces and looked upward, as if to relieve his aching eyes.

He saw everything that occurred on the grating. He saw a man slip down
the ladder behind Frank and s