n.
Here are two despatches, the first from Washington--Wait! I must close
the door----" Bang! And then came only muffled and inarticulate sound.

Down the winding stairs he sped and knelt at Allison's door. Oh, wise
young daughter! not only that, but the inner, the closet door, was shut.
No time for squeamishness this. Noiselessly turning the knob, he
stealthily entered and tiptoed to the closet just in time to catch these
words:

"Entire system will be tied up. Trainmen cannot face such assaults."

"Did you hear? Yes? They were handed Mr. Elmendorf at the door ten
minutes--What? Certainly. He came in after midnight. Yes--At least I
think he is--He went up to his room--Don't let him get what?--the
contents? the despatches? Certainly not. Who will come for them? Why?
Aren't you ever coming home? Oh, papa, do be careful! You've no idea of
the wild things that--that fellow said. What? The Silver Special going
out in an hour--Oh, goody!"

But Elmendorf did not stop to hear more. Slinking away, he sped down the
stairway, and in another moment was hastening southward through the
starlit summer night.

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

CHAPTER XIII.

Down in the southwestward district of the far-spreading city a howling
mob of half-drunken men, women, and street-boys had surged through the
freight-yards of a great railway company, and, first looting the
contents, were now setting fire to the cars. Here and there along the
glistening lines on which ordinarily sped the swift express or suburban
trains were toppled now bulky brown boxes, with their greasy, dripping
trucks protruding in air. At adjacent street-corners helmeted policemen,
idly swinging their clubs behind them, looked on and laughed. Where at
sundown the previous day perhaps a thousand angry-looking men and women
had hovered, menacing, above the great crossing of the Central and the
P.Q. & R., ten thousand furies now seemed loose. The triumphant boast of
the strike-leaders that not a wheel should turn on Allison's road had
been laughed to scorn. Not only had Allison, with a force of deputies
and loyal trainmen, cleared his tracks at midnight and sent the famous
Silver Special, full panoplied, on its way, but the armed deputies that
took it to the county line brought in under cover of their Winchesters
and the darkness of early morning three side-tracked trains from the far
West.

And now indeed was there raging and gnashing of teeth. Men thus brave