n had said a man could win the world with an expression like
that upon his face.

"Keep your knife, Falutini; cut up garlic with it: don't use it on me,
amico--partner."

They went to work without a word further on the part of either, and
Number Twenty-four slipped out on to the switch and was wedded to the
local on the main line.

Fairfax was relieved in mind, and the morbid horror of his crisis had
been beaten and shaken out.

"What brutes we are," he thought, "what brutes and animals. It is a
wonder that any spirit can grow its wings at any time."

He drew up into a station and stopped, and, leaning out of his window,
watched the passengers board the train. Pluff, pluff, pant, pant. The
steal and flow and glide, the run and the motion that his hand on the
throttle controlled and regulated, became oftentimes musical to him, and
when he was morose he would not let the glide and the roll run to
familiar melodies in his head, above all, no Southern melodies. "Tramp,
tramp, tramp, the boys are marching," that was the favourite with Number
Twenty-four. He had used to whistle it as he modelled in his room in New
Orleans, where the vines grew around his window and Maris made molasses
cake and brought it up hot when the syrup was thick on the side, and
downstairs a voice would call, "Emmeline, oh, Emmeline." That sacred
voice...! When Number Twenty-four was doing her thirty miles an hour,
that was the maximum speed of the local, her wheels were inclined to
sing--

"Flow gently, sweet Afton,
Among thy green braes:
Flow gently, I'll sing thee
A song in thy praise.
My Mary's asleep
By thy murmuring stream,
Flow gently, sweet Afton,
Disturb not her dream."

And little Gardiner leaned hard against his arm and Bella ran upstairs
to escape the music because she did not like to cry, and his aunt's
dove-like eyes reproached him for his brutal flight. He would not hear
any ballads; but to-night, no sooner had he rolled out again into the
open country than he began to hum unconsciously the first tune the
wheels suggested. They were between the harvest fields and in the
moonlight lay the grain left by the reapers.

"Cielo azuro
Giornata splendida,
Mia Maddalena."

Fairfax laughed when he recognized it. He glanced over at Falutini who
was leaning out of his window dejectedly. At the next station, whilst
the engine let off steam, Fairfax called to his firema