is orders
every time he touched the key. Spence was both hurried and anxious
that night and the key was busy. In the somewhat dim light, Spence, to
Noodles' fancy, assumed the aspect of an animated jumping jack.

Deftly, through long experience, Noodles coiled his pin with a wicked
upshoot to the center of attack, cautiously lowered his own chair,
which had been tilted back against the wall, to the more stable
position of four legs on the floor, leaned forward, and laid the pin at
a strategic point on the seat of Spence's chair. Two minutes later,
kicked bodily down the stairs, Noodles was surveying the Big Cloud
yards by moonlight from the perspective of the station platform.

Noodles' career as a call boy had been brief--and it was ended. Old
Bill, the boiler-washer, came to the rescue. He explained to Regan who
the godfather of the boy was and what bearing that had on the case, and
how he'd larruped the boy for what he'd done, and how the boy hadn't
meant anything by it--and could the boy have another chance?

Regan said, "Yes," and said it shortly, more because he was busy at the
time and wanted to get rid of Old Bill than from any predisposition
toward Noodles. Noodles wasn't predisposing any way you looked at him,
and Regan had a good look at his godson now for about the first time
since he'd sponsored him, and he didn't like Noodles'
looks--particularly. But Regan, not taking too serious a view of the
matter, said yes, and put Noodles at work over in the roundhouse under
the eye of his father.

Here, for a month, in one way or another, Noodles succeeded in making
things lively, and himself cordially disliked by about everybody in the
shops, the roundhouse, and the Big Cloud yards generally. And there
was a hint or two thrown out, that reached Regan's ears, that old Bill
had known what he was doing when he got one of the "big fellows" as
godfather for as ugly a blasted little nuisance as the Hill Division
had known for many a long day. Regan got to scowling every time he saw
Noodles' unhandsome countenance, and he took pains on more than one
occasion to give a bit of blunt advice to both Noodles and Noodles'
father--which the former received somewhat ungraciously, and the latter
with trepidation.

And then one night as it grew dark, just before six o'clock, while Bill
and the turner and the wipers were washing up and trying to put in the
time before the whistle blew, Noodles dropped into the turntabl