hem.
Nor was it to be long afterward--without warning, without so much as a
premonition, quick and sudden as doom, things happen in railroading.

It was half past five when Flannagan went out of the super's office; it
was but ten minutes later when, before he had decanted a drop from the
bottle he had just lifted to fill his glass, he slapped the bottle back
on the bar of the Blazing Star with a sudden jerk. From down the
street in the direction of the yards boomed three long blasts from the
shop whistle--the wrecking signal. It came again and again. Men
around him began to move. Chairs from the little tables were pushed
hurriedly back. The bell in the English chapel took up the alarm. It
stirred the blood in Flannagan's veins, and whipped it to his cheeks in
fierce excitement--it was the call to arms!

He turned from the bar--and stopped like a man stunned. There had been
times in the last six months when he had not responded to that call,
because, deaf to everything, he had not _heard_ it. Then, it had been
his call--the call for the wrecking crew, and, first of all, for the
wrecking boss; now--there was a dazed look on his face, and his lips
worked queerly. It was not for him, he was barred--_out_.

Slowly he turned back to the bar, rested his foot on the rail, and,
with a mirthless laugh and a shrug of his shoulders, reached for the
bottle again. He poured the whisky glass full to the brim--and laughed
once more and shrugged his shoulders as his fingers curled around it.
He raised the glass--and held it poised halfway to his lips.

Quick-running steps came up the street, the swinging doors of the
Blazing Star burst open and a call boy shoved in his head.

"Wreckers out! Wreckers out!" he bawled. "Number Eighty's gone to
glory in Spider Cut. Everybody's killed"--and he was gone, a
grimy-faced harbinger of death and disaster; gone, speeding with his
summons to wherever men were gathered throughout the little town.

An instant Flannagan stood motionless as one transformed from flesh to
sculptured clay--then the glass slid from his fingers and crashed into
tinkling splinters on the floor. The liquor splashed his boots.
Number Eighty was the eastbound Coast Express! Like one who moves in
unknown places through the dark, so, then, Flannagan moved toward the
door. Men looked at him in amazement, and stood aside to let him pass.
Something was tugging at his heart, beating at his brain, impelling him
fo