t, and smashed Paxley with it between the
eyes. Paxley was a big man physically--and a bigger man still where it
counts most and doesn't show--with the blood streaming down his face,
and half blinded, regardless of the blows that Owsley still tried to
rain upon him, he picked the engineer up in his arms like a baby, and
with Brannigan, dropping off the gangway and helping, got Owsley to the
ground.

Owsley hadn't been fit for excitement or exertion of that kind--for
_any_ kind of excitement or exertion. They took him back to his
boarding house, and Doctor McTurk screwed his eyes up over him in the
funny way he had when things looked critical, and Mrs. McCann nursed
him daytimes, and Carleton and Regan and two or three others took turns
sitting up with him nights--for a month. Then Owsley began to mend
again, and began to talk of getting back on the Limited run with the
1601--always the 1601. And most times he talked pretty straight,
too--as straight as any of the rest of them--only his memory seemed to
keep that queer sort of haze over it--up to the time of the accident it
seemed all right, but after that things blurred woefully.

Regan, Carleton and Doctor McTurk went into committee over it in the
super's office one afternoon just before Owsley was out of bed again.

"What d'ye say--h'm? What d'ye say, doc?" demanded Regan.

Doctor McTurk, scientific and professional in every inch of his little
body, lined his eyebrows up into a ferocious black streak across his
forehead, and talked medicine in medical terms into the superintendent
and the master mechanic for a good five minutes.

When he had finished, Carleton's brows were puckered, too, his face was
a little blank, and he tapped the edge of his desk with the end of his
pencil somewhat helplessly.

Regan tugged at both ends of his mustache and sputtered.

"What the blazes!" he growled. "Give it to us in plain railroading!
Has he got rights through--or hasn't he? Does he get better--or does
he not? H'm?"

"I don't know, I tell you!" retorted Doctor McTurk. "I don't know--and
that's flat. I've told you why a minute ago. I don't know whether
he'll ever be better in his head than he is now--otherwise he'll come
around all right."

"Well, what's to be done?" inquired Carleton.

"He's got to work for a living, I suppose--eh?" Doctor McTurk answered.
"And he can't run an engine any more on account of the colors, no
matter what happens. That's the stat