"but if you
want the discomfort of balancing on the tank cover back there----"

"I'd dote on it--thanks, thanks," said Archie with a fervor that
increased Ralph's curiosity as to his strange actions this particular
morning.

"Got some new bee in his head?" suggested Fogg, as Archie scrambled up
over the coal. "He'll have a new kind of locomotive built by the time
we clear the limits--that is, in his mind."

Lord Lionel Montague warmed up to Ralph the next few minutes before
starting time. He asked a few casual questions about the mechanisms of
No. 999, and then seemed tremendously interested in the young engineer
himself.

"I've taken a fawncy to you, Mr. Fairbanks, don't you know," he
drawled out. "I'd like to cultivate you, quite. I must call on you at
Stanley Junction. There's a great deal you might tell me of interest,
don't you see."

"I shall be happy to be of service to you, Lord Montague," responded
Ralph courteously.

He did not like the man. There was something untrue about his shifty
eye. There was a lot of "put on" that did not strike Ralph as natural.
"His ludship" harped on the youth of Ralph. Only veterans were
intrusted with important railroad positions in England--"didn't he
know." He was asking many questions about Ralph's juvenile friends, as
if with some secret purpose, when the train started up.

"Hi, up there!" Fogg challenged Archie, seated on the tank tender top,
"don't get moving up there and tumble off."

The young inventor certainly looked as if he was moving. His eyes were
glued to the smokestack of the locomotive, as though it possessed a
fascinating influence over him.

"Say, there's some draft this morning," observed the fireman, half-way
to the crossing, as he threw some coal into the furnace.

"I should say so," replied Ralph; "some sparks, too, I notice."

"Humph! that new patent spark arrester don't arrest particularly,"
commented Fogg. "Queer," he added, with a speculative eye on the
smokestack.

That appendage of No. 999 was shooting out showers of sparks like a
roman candle. As she slid the splits at the crossing and got down to
real business, the display was very noticeable.

"I'd say that some of our old time enemies were doctoring the fuel, if
it wasn't that the crowd is off the job after that last drubbing I
gave Hall and Wilson," remarked the fireman. "I can't understand it.
That draft is pulling the coal up through the flues fast as I can
shovel it in. Thund