ea racked Toddles again; there was nothing to do
now--nothing. He couldn't stop her--couldn't stop her. He'd--he'd
tried--very hard--and--and he couldn't stop her now. He took his hands
from his face, and stole a glance up the track, afraid almost, with the
horror that was upon him, to look.

She hadn't swung the curve yet, but she would in a minute--and come
pounding down the stretch at fifty miles an hour, shoot by him like a
rocket to where, somewhere ahead, in some form, he did not know what,
only knew that it was there, death and ruin and----

"_Use your head!_" snapped Donkin's voice to his consciousness.

Toddles' eyes were on the light above his head. It blinked _red_ at him
as he stood on the track facing it; the green rays were shooting up and
down the line. He couldn't swing the switch--but the _lamp_ was
there--and there was the red side to show just by turning it. He
remembered then that the lamp fitted into a socket at the top of the
switch stand, and could be lifted off--if he could reach it!

It wasn't very high--for an ordinary-sized man--for an ordinary-sized
man had to get at it to trim and fill it daily--only Toddles wasn't an
ordinary-sized man. It was just nine or ten feet above the rails--just a
standard siding switch.

Toddles gritted his teeth, and climbed upon the base of the switch--and
nearly fainted as his ankle swung against the rod. A foot above the base
was a footrest for a man to stand on and reach up for the lamp, and
Toddles drew himself up and got his foot on it--and then at his full
height the tips of his fingers only just touched the bottom of the lamp.
Toddles cried aloud, and the tears streamed down his face now. Oh, if he
weren't hurt--if he could only shin up another foot--but--but it was all
he could do to hang there where he was.

_What was that!_ He turned his head. Up the track, sweeping in a great
circle as it swung the curve, a headlight's glare cut through the
night--and Toddles "shinned" the foot. He tugged and tore at the lamp,
tugged and tore at it, loosened it, lifted it from its socket, sprawled
and wriggled with it to the ground--and turned the red side of the lamp
against second Number Two.

The quick, short blasts of a whistle answered, then the crunch and grind
and scream of biting brake-shoes--and the big mountain racer, the 1012,
pulling the second section of the Limited that night, stopped with its
pilot nosing a diminutive figure in a torn and silver-b