and fired you, and I was
to get you a nice job somewhere in New York, maybe you might find the
way to Mountain City, eh?"

The boy suddenly stopped masticating, and looked at him doubtfully.
Jimmy assumed his most seductive grin, took his wallet from his pocket
and exposed several bills, and fingered them with something like a
caress.

"I could find the way all right, and I guess the roads could be got
across somehow, and I'd like to make that money--Gee! I never had that
much in my life! But--somehow it don't look square to treat the Emporium
that way!"

Suddenly Jimmy was aware of a rumbling and roaring and puffing, and saw
the expected freight train approaching. It whistled at the tank, true to
form, and Jimmy ran across to the edge of the platform as it came
panting along, and stared at it wistfully. He wished that he were expert
in boarding trains, and then, as it passed, decided that it must be
traveling at a rate of at least a hundred miles an hour, although it was
barely doing fifteen. He made a desperate clutch at the rails of the
caboose, felt as if his arm had been jerked from its socket and his
heels into the air, and then found himself sitting in the middle of the
track with his hat some ten or fifteen feet away and a cooling mixture
of snow and cinders up his trousers legs. He got up, felt himself over
to learn that he was unbroken, and recovered his hat.

"By gee whiz!" he exclaimed. "Never knew it was so hard to hop aboard
one of those things before. Hoboes have it on me all right! My
education's been neglected."

His solicitous friend, the boy, had come to see if there was anything
left of him and said, "Hope you ain't hurted much, Mister? Humph! I
could have caught her all right, I bet you! You don't know how. The
minute you catch hold you want to jump. If you wait you can't do
nothin'. But I'll say you did look funny, all right, with your heels and
your coat tails and your hat all flyin' at onct!"

"Well, I'm glad I amused you, anyway," said Jimmy, cheerfully. "Now
about going to Mountain City, where were we? Oh, yes! The Emporium.
Would you go if I got their consent--for a ten dollar bill you know?"

The boy brightened visibly.

"If you can get old Wade to say I can, you bet I'll go!" said the boy
with marked enthusiasm. "He's got a 'phone, and there's one in the
depot. Ask him!"

Jimmy hastened inside as fast as his stiffness would permit and was
starting toward the ticket office to mak