t's liable to
jounce ye a little. Fifteen an' a half out, after the grade at Jackson's
crossin'. You'll know it by a farmhouse an' a windmill an' five
maples in the dooryard. Windmill's west o' the maples. An' there's
an eighty-foot iron bridge in the middle o' that section with no
guard-rails. See you later. Luck!"

Before he knew well what had happened, .007 was flying up the track into
the dumb, dark world. Then fears of the night beset him. He remembered
all he had ever heard of landslides, rain-piled boulders, blown trees,
and strayed cattle, all that the Boston Compound had ever said of
responsibility, and a great deal more that came out of his own head.
With a very quavering voice he whistled for his first grade-crossing
(an event in the life of a locomotive), and his nerves were in no way
restored by the sight of a frantic horse and a white-faced man in a
buggy less than a yard from his right shoulder. Then he was sure he
would jump the track; felt his flanges mounting the rail at every curve;
knew that his first grade would make him lie down even as Comanche had
done at the Newtons. He whirled down the grade to Jackson's crossing,
saw the windmill west of the maples, felt the badly laid rails spring
under him, and sweated big drops all over his boiler. At each jarring
bump he believed an axle had smashed, and he took the eighty-foot bridge
without the guard-rail like a hunted cat on the top of a fence. Then
a wet leaf stuck against the glass of his headlight and threw a flying
shadow on the track, so that he thought it was some little dancing
animal that would feel soft if he ran over it; and anything soft
underfoot frightens a locomotive as it does an elephant. But the men
behind seemed quite calm. The wrecking-crew were climbing carelessly
from the caboose to the tender--even jesting with the engineer, for
he heard a shuffling of feet among the coal, and the snatch of a song,
something like this:

"Oh, the Empire State must learn to wait,
And the Cannon-ball go hang!
When the West-bound's ditched, and the tool-car's hitched,
And it's 'way for the Breakdown Gang (Tare-ra!)
'Way for the Breakdown Gang!"

"Say! Eustis knew what he was doin' when he designed this rig. She's a
hummer. New, too."

"Snff! Phew! She is new. That ain't paint, that's--"

A burning pain shot through .007's right rear driver--a crippling,
stinging pain.

"This," said .007, as he flew, "is a hot-box. Now I know