e, when he entered the roundhouse, industrious silence supplanted
the discussion of the superintendent's case. Glancing at the group of
enginemen, and snapping out a curt criticism of Broadbent's slowness on
the valve-seats, he beckoned to Judson. When the discharged engineer had
followed him across the turn-table, he faced about and said, not too
crisply, "So your sins have found you out one more time, have they,
John?"

Judson nodded.

"What is it this time, thirty days?"

Judson shook his head gloomily. "No, I'm down and out."

"Lidgerwood made it final, did he? Well, you can't blame him."

"You hain't heard me sayin' anything, have you?" was the surly
rejoinder.

"No, but it isn't in human nature to forget these little things." Then,
suddenly: "Where were you day before yesterday between noon and one
o'clock, about the time you should have been taking your train out?"

Judson had a needle-like mind when the alcohol was out of it, and the
sudden query made him dissemble.

"About ten o'clock I was playin' pool in Rafferty's place with the butt
end of the cue. After that, things got kind o'hazy."

"Well, I want you to buckle down and think hard. Don't you remember
going over to Cat Biggs's about noon, and sitting down at one of the
empty card-tables to drink yourself stiff?"

Judson could not have told, under the thumbscrews, why he was prompted
to tell Gridley a plain lie. But he did it.

"I can't remember," he denied. Then then needle-pointed brain got in its
word, and he added, "Why?"

"I saw you there when I was going up to dinner. You called me in to tell
me what you were going to do to Lidgerwood if he slated you for getting
drunk. Don't you remember it?"

Judson was looking the master-mechanic fairly in the eyes when he said,
"No, I don't remember a thing about that."

"Try again," said Gridley, and now the shrewd gray eyes under the brim
of the soft-rolled felt hat held the engineer helpless.

"I guess--I do--remember it--now," said Judson, slowly, trying, still
ineffectually, to break Gridley's masterful eyehold upon him.

[Illustration: "Bart's afraid he can't duck without dying."]

"I thought you would," said the master-mechanic, without releasing him.
"And you probably remember, also, that I took you out into the street
and started you home."

"Yes," said Judson, this time without hesitation.

"Well, keep on remembering it; you went home to Maggie, and she put you
to bed. That is wha