ut a trunk. He was so weak he couldn't lift it. They were all as
pale as a whitewashed fence.

After the train left Greenfield they all gathered in the car and
listened at a respectful distance from the coffin. All was as still as
a car can be that is running twenty-five miles an hour. They gathered
a little nearer, but no noise, when Cornes said they were all off their
base, and had better soak their heads.

"You fellows are overworked, and are nervous, The company ought to give
you a furlough, and pay your expenses to the sea shore."

Just then there was a rustling as if somebody had rolled over in bed and
a voice said, as plainly as possible:

"O, how I suffer!"

If a nitro-glycerine bomb had exploded there could not have been more
commotion. The express man rushed forward, and was going to climb over
into the tender of the engine, the baggage man started for the emigrant
car to see if there was anybody from the place in Germany that his hired
girl came from, and Cornes happened to think that he had not collected
fare from an Indian that got on at Greenfield with a lot of muskrat
skins. In less than four seconds the corpse and parrot were the sole
occupants of the car. The three train men and a brakeman met in the
emigrant car and looked at each other.

They never said a word for about two minutes, when Fred opened the ball.
He said there was no use of being scared, if the man was dead he was not
dangerous, and if he was alive the four of them could whip him, if he
undertook to run things. What they were in duty bound to do was to let
him out. No man could enjoy life screwed down in a sarcophagus like
that.

"Now," says Cornes, "there is a doctor from Milwaukee in the sleeper.
I will go and ask him to come in the baggage car, and you fellows go in
and pull the trunks off that coffin, and we will take a screw driver
and a can-opener and give the man air. That's doing as a fellow would be
done by."

So he went and got the doctor and told him he had got a case for him.
He wanted him to practice on a dead man. The doctor put on his pants and
overcoat, and went with Fred. As they came into the baggage car the boys
were lifting a big trunk off the coffin, when the voice said:

"Go easy. Glory hallelujah!"

Then they all turned pale again, but all took hold of the baggage and
worked with a will, while the doctor held a screw driver he had fished
out of a tool box.

The doctor said the man was evidently alive,