k. But his spirit was broken, and
his nerve was gone.

"'T weren't even a hog," he repeated dolefully; "'t were a shote; and
you--you of all of 'em--had to help me on."

"But how in the whole long road did it happen?" asked 007, sizzling with
curiosity.

"Happen! It didn't happen! It just come! I sailed right on top of him
around that last curve--thought he was a skunk. Yes; he was all as
little as that. He hadn't more 'n squealed once 'fore I felt my bogies
lift (he'd rolled right under the pilot), and I couldn't catch the track
again to save me. Swivelled clean off, I was. Then I felt him sling
himself along, all greasy, under my left leadin' driver, and, oh,
Boilers! that mounted the rail. I heard my flanges zippin' along the
ties, an' the next I knew I was playin' 'Sally, Sally Waters' in the
corn, my tender shuckin' coal through my cab, an' old man Evans lyin'
still an' bleedin' in front o' me. Shook? There ain't a stay or a bolt
or a rivet in me that ain't sprung to glory somewhere."

"Umm!" said 007. "What d' you reckon you weigh?"

"Without these lumps o' dirt I'm all of a hundred thousand pound."

"And the shote?"

"Eighty. Call him a hundred pound at the outside. He's worth about four
'n' a half dollars. Ain't it awful? Ain't it enough to give you nervous
prostration? Ain't it paralysin'? Why, I come just around that curve--"
and the Mogul told the tale again, for he was very badly shaken.

"Well, it's all in the day's run, I guess," said 007, soothingly;
"an'--an' a corn-field's pretty soft fallin'."

"If it had bin a sixty-foot bridge, an' I could ha' slid off into deep
water an' blown up an' killed both men, same as others have done, I
wouldn't ha' cared; but to be ditched by a shote--an' you to help me
out--in a corn-field--an' an old hayseed in his nightgown cussin' me
like as if I was a sick truck-horse!... Oh, it's awful! Don't call me
Mogul! I'm a sewin'-machine, they'll guy my sand-box off in the yard."

And 007, his hot-box cooled and his experience vastly enlarged, hauled
the Mogul freight slowly to the roundhouse.

"Hello, old man! Bin out all night, hain't ye?" said the irrepressible
Poney, who had just come off duty. "Well, I must say you look it.
Costly-perishable-fragile-immediate--that's you! Go to the shops, take
them vine-leaves out o' your hair, an' git 'em to play the hose on you."

"Leave him alone, Poney," said 007 severely, as he was swung on the
turn-table, "or I'll--"