the train jolly soon stops. That's what they call
the Power of Science in the newspapers."

He showed her two little dials, like clock faces, and told her how one
showed how much steam was going, and the other showed if the brake was
working properly.

By the time she had seen him shut off steam with a big shining steel
handle, Bobbie knew more about the inside working of an engine than she
had ever thought there was to know, and Jim had promised that his second
cousin's wife's brother should solder the toy engine, or Jim would know
the reason why. Besides all the knowledge she had gained Bobbie felt
that she and Bill and Jim were now friends for life, and that they had
wholly and forever forgiven her for stumbling uninvited among the sacred
coals of their tender.

At Stacklepoole Junction she parted from them with warm expressions of
mutual regard. They handed her over to the guard of a returning train--a
friend of theirs--and she had the joy of knowing what guards do in their
secret fastnesses, and understood how, when you pull the communication
cord in railway carriages, a wheel goes round under the guard's nose and
a loud bell rings in his ears. She asked the guard why his van smelt
so fishy, and learned that he had to carry a lot of fish every day, and
that the wetness in the hollows of the corrugated floor had all drained
out of boxes full of plaice and cod and mackerel and soles and smelts.

Bobbie got home in time for tea, and she felt as though her mind would
burst with all that had been put into it since she parted from the
others. How she blessed the nail that had torn her frock!

"Where have you been?" asked the others.

"To the station, of course," said Roberta. But she would not tell a word
of her adventures till the day appointed, when she mysteriously led them
to the station at the hour of the 3.19's transit, and proudly introduced
them to her friends, Bill and Jim. Jim's second cousin's wife's brother
had not been unworthy of the sacred trust reposed in him. The toy engine
was, literally, as good as new.

"Good-bye--oh, good-bye," said Bobbie, just before the engine screamed
ITS good-bye. "I shall always, always love you--and Jim's second
cousin's wife's brother as well!"

And as the three children went home up the hill, Peter hugging the
engine, now quite its own self again, Bobbie told, with joyous leaps of
the heart, the story of how she had been an Engine-burglar.

Chapter V. Prisoners