missed the express which he had been
ordered to take, by his failure to be on time for it, he was obliged
to proceed by the "excursion extra." He was feeling particularly
self-important that morning, in consequence of having been sent for on
business by the President, and he sauntered through the train with an
offensive air of proprietorship and authority. Not choosing to remain in
one of the ordinary coaches, with ordinary excursionists, he walked into
the empty baggage car, and stood looking through the window in its forward
door. The moment he spied Rod, comfortably seated in the cab of the
locomotive, all his old feeling of jealousy was aroused. He had applied
to the engineman for permission to ride there a few minutes before Rod
appeared, and it had been refused. Now to see the person whom he had most
deeply injured, and consequently most thoroughly disliked, riding where he
could not, was particularly galling to his pride.

During the first stop made by the train, he walked to the locomotive, and,
in a most disagreeable tone, asked Rod if he had a written order
permitting him to ride there.

"I have not," answered the young fireman.

"Then I shall consider it my duty to report both you and the engineman,
for a violation of rule 116, which provides that no person, except those
employed upon it, shall be permitted to ride on a locomotive without a
written order from the proper authority," said Snyder, as he turned away.

This unwarranted assumption of authority made Rod furious; and, as he
looked back and saw Snyder regarding him from the baggage car, he longed
for an opportunity of giving the young man a piece of his mind. His
feelings were fully shared by the other occupants of the cab. While they
were still discussing the incident, the train plunged into a tunnel, just
east of the Euston grade. Here, before it quite reached the other end, it
became involved in one of the most curious and startling accidents known
in the history of railroads.

CHAPTER XXXIX.

SNYDER IS FORGIVEN.

As the locomotive was beginning to emerge from the blackness of the
tunnel, and those in its cab were just able to distinguish one another's
faces by the rapidly increasing light from the tunnel's mouth, there came
an awful crash and a shock like that of an earthquake. A shower of loose
rocks fell on, and into, the cab. The locomotive was jerked backward with
a sickening violence, and for a moment its driving wheels spun fu