en the despatcher had finished, his
companion reached the head of the stairs in a jump.

"I'll try for it!" he said. "There's just one chance. I'll try to make
the quarries!"

Despite the fact that headquarters was now calling back, Mingle ran to
the door. He was just in time to see the night despatcher lifting
something down the steps outside.

"Try for it, Rollie!" he shouted, and ran out into the rain. As he stood
there he caught a glimpse of a figure fast leaving the yards. It was a
man bent low over the handle-bars of a bicycle, his feet rising and
falling with the quickness and ease of the trained racer. Mingle caught
a flash of the steel spokes as the night despatcher turned the corner
under the lamp-post into the road. Then he pulled himself up the stairs
as if his feet were made of lead, and telegraphed the message to
headquarters as slowly as if he had been a beginner, and not one of the
best operators on the line.

* * * * *

The road that led outside of Jimtown stretched along through a bit of
woods, and then plunged down the side of the mountain so steeply that
loaded teams would halt every hundred feet or so to rest in the ascent.

A year before Rollins had coasted down Coon Hill, on a wager, but that
was in broad daylight, with his club-mates stationed at every curve, and
the roadway was cleared for him as far as the sandy stretch before the
railroad crossing. Every stone had been picked out, and the water-bars
evened up at the left-hand side. At one place, he remembered, his speed
had been reckoned, in a measured one hundred yards, at forty miles an
hour.

The railroad, to avoid the grade, followed the course of the Coponie,
and circled about to the northward. Rollins had only to ride four miles
to the ore-cars eleven--but such a night for coasting!

The rain made it hard for him to follow the little circle of light that
his lantern threw before him as he scorched along the level stretch.

Before he reached the hill-top it seemed to him that he was standing
still, and the road coming up at him like the surface of a great wheel.

At last, he felt that he had reached down-grade. How he longed now for
the brake that he had so disdained! He determined to keep his feet going
as long as he safely could, and he back-pedalled gently to keep them in
place.

Thud! he struck the first water-bar, and his cap came forward over his
eyes. He threw it off with a backward toss