spered Sammy Durgan.

He crept farther forward, very cautiously--still farther--and then he
lay full length, crouched against the rock wall at the end of the cut.
He could see now, and the red hair of Sammy Durgan kind of straggled
down damp over his forehead, and his little black eyes lost their
pupils.

It was a passenger train; one side of it quite hidden by the sharp
curve of the track, the other side presented almost full on to Sammy
Durgan's view--the whole length of it. And Sammy Durgan, gasping,
stared. Not ten yards away from the mouth of the cut a huge pile of
ties were laid across the rails, with the pilot of the stalled engine
almost nosing them. Down the embankment, a very steep embankment where
the Dam River swirled along, marched there evidently at the revolver's
point, the engine crew stood with their hands up in the air--at the
revolver's point with a masked man behind it. Along the length of the
train, two or three more masked men were shooting past the windows in
curt intimation to the passengers that the safest thing they could do
was to stay where they were; and farther down, by the rear coach, the
conductor and two brakemen, like their mates of the engine crew, held
their hands steadfastly above their heads as another bandit covered
them with his weapon. And through the open door of the express car
Sammy Durgan could see bobbing heads and straining backs, and the
express company's safe being worked across the floor preparatory to
heaving it out on the ground.

It takes long to tell it--Sammy Durgan got it all as a second flies.
And something, a bitter something, seemed to be gnawing at Sammy
Durgan's vitals.

"Holy Mither!" he mumbled miserably. "'Tis an emergency, all
right--but 'tis not the right kind of an emergency. What could any one
man do against a lot of bloodthirsty, desperate devils like that,
that'd sooner cut your throat than look at you!"

Sammy Durgan's hand inadvertently rubbed against his right-hand coat
pocket--and his revolver. He drew it out mechanically, and it seemed
to put new life into Sammy Durgan, for, as he stared again at the scene
before him, Sammy Durgan quivered with a sudden, fierce elation.

"I was wrong," said Sammy Durgan grimly. "'Tis the right kind of an
emergency, after all--and 'tis the man that uses his head and rises to
one that counts. I'll show 'em, Maria, and Regan, and the rest of 'em!
Begorra, it can be done! 'Tis no one 'll notice me w