softly between his teeth, and his brow puckers. Then he addresses the
engine, half in expostulation and half in despair, "Oh, you condemned
old female dog!" He puts the sentence more crisply--much more
crisply--and Ignorance chuckles sympathetically.

Ignorance also is puzzled over these engines.

CHAPTER III

VULCAN'S FORGE.

In the wilderness of the railway shops--and machinery that planes and
shaves, and bevels and stamps, and punches and hoists and nips--the
first idea that occurs to an outsider, when he has seen the men who
people the place, is that it must be the birthplace of inventions--a
pasture-ground of fat patents. If a writing-man, who plays with shadows
and dresses dolls that others may laugh at their antics, draws help and
comfort and new methods of working old ideas from the stored shelves of
a library, how, in the name of Commonsense, his god, can a doing-man,
whose mind is set upon things that snatch a few moments from flying Time
or put power into weak hands, refrain from going forward and adding new
inventions to the hundreds among which he daily moves?

Appealed to on this subject, Experience, who had served the E. I. R.
loyally for many years, held his peace. "We don't go in much for
patents; but," he added, with a praiseworthy attempt to turn the
conversation, "we can build you any mortal thing you like. We've got the
_Bradford Leslie_ steamer for the Sahibgunge ferry. Come and see the
brass-work for her bows. It's in the casting-shed."

It would have been cruel to have pressed Experience further, and
Ignorance, to foredate matters a little, went about to discover why
Experience shied off this question, and why the men of Jamalpur had not
each and all invented and patented something. He won his information in
the end, but did not come from Jamalpur. _That_ must be clearly
understood. It was found anywhere you please between Howrah and Hoti
Mardan; and here it is that all the world may admire a prudent and
far-sighted Board of Directors. Once upon a time, as every one in the
profession knows, two men invented the D. and O. sleeper--cast iron, of
five pieces, very serviceable. The men were in the Company's employ, and
their masters said: "Your brains are ours. Hand us over those sleepers."
Being of pay and position, D. and O. made some sort of resistance and
got a royalty or a bonus. At any rate, the Company had to pay for its
sleepers. But thereafter, and the condition exists to this