ybe I'll fetch up at Haverstraw. I've only bin out ten
months, but I'm homesick--I'm just achin' homesick."

"Try Chicago, Katie," said the switching-loco; and the battered old
car lumbered down the track, jolting: "I want to be in Kansas when the
sunflowers bloom."

"'Yard's full o' Homeless Kates an' Wanderin' Willies," he explained
to.007. "I knew an old Fitchburg flat-car out seventeen months; an' one
of ours was gone fifteen 'fore ever we got track of her. Dunno quite how
our men fix it. 'Swap around, I guess. Anyway, I've done my duty. She's
on her way to Kansas, via Chicago; but I'll lay my next boilerful she'll
be held there to wait consignee's convenience, and sent back to us with
wheat in the fall."

Just then the Pittsburgh Consolidation passed, at the head of a dozen
cars.

"I'm goin' home," he said proudly.

"Can't get all them twelve on to the flat. Break 'em in half, Dutchy!"
cried Poney. But it was.007 who was backed down to the last six cars,
and he nearly blew up with surprise when he found himself pushing
them on to a huge ferry-boat. He had never seen deep water before, and
shivered as the flat drew away and left his bogies within six inches of
the black, shiny tide.

After this he was hurried to the freight-house, where he saw the
yard-master, a smallish, white-faced man in shirt, trousers, and
slippers, looking down upon a sea of trucks, a mob of bawling truckmen,
and squadrons of backing, turning, sweating, spark-striking horses.

"That's shippers' carts loadin' on to the receivin' trucks," said the
small engine, reverently. "But he don't care. He lets 'em cuss. He's
the Czar-King-Boss! He says 'Please,' and then they kneel down an' pray.
There's three or four strings o' today's freight to be pulled before he
can attend to them. When he waves his hand that way, things happen."

A string of loaded cars slid out down the track, and a string of empties
took their place. Bales, crates, boxes, jars, carboys, frails, cases,
and packages flew into them from the freight-house as though the cars
had been magnets and they iron filings.

"Ki-yah!" shrieked little Poney. "Ain't it great?"

A purple-faced truckman shouldered his way to the yard-master, and shook
his fist under his nose. The yard-master never looked up from his bundle
of freight receipts. He crooked his forefinger slightly, and a tall
young man in a red shirt, lounging carelessly beside him, hit the
truckman under the left ear, so t