to the pole,
trying to understand. All this business that so blinded and bewildered
with its mystery, not only the farmer, but the village folks as well,
was to him as simple as sunshine.

In a little while he had learned to read a newspaper with one eye and
keep the other on the narrow window that looked out along the line; to
mark with one ear the "down brakes" signal of the north-bound freight,
clear in the siding, and with the other to catch the whistle of the
oncoming "cannon ball," faint and far away.

When Jewett had been at Springdale some six or eight months, another
young man dropped from the local one morning, and said, "_Wie gehts_,"
and handed him a letter. The letter was from the Superintendent, calling
him back to Bloomington to despatch trains. Being the youngest of the
despatchers, he had to take the "death trick." The day man used to work
from eight o'clock in the morning until four o'clock in the afternoon,
the "split trick" man from four until midnight, and the "death trick"
man from midnight until morning.

We called it the "death trick" because, in the early days of
railroading, we had a lot of wrecks about four o'clock in the morning.
That was before double tracks and safety inventions had made travelling
by rail safer than sleeping at home, and before trainmen off duty had
learned to look not on liquor that was red. Jewett, however, was not
long on the night shift. He was a good despatcher,--a bit risky at
times, the chief thought, but that was only when he knew his man. He was
a rusher and ran trains close, but he was ever watchful and wide awake.

In two years' time he had become chief despatcher. During these years
the country, so quiet when he first went to Bloomington, had been torn
by the tumult of civil strife.

With war news passing under his eye every day, trains going south with
soldiers, and cars coming north with the wounded, it is not remarkable
that the fever should get into the young despatcher's blood. He read of
the great, sad Lincoln, whom he had seen and heard and known, calling
for volunteers, and his blood rushed red and hot through his veins. He
talked to the trainmen who came in to register, to enginemen waiting for
orders, to yardmen in the yards, and to shopmen after hours; and many of
them, catching the contagion, urged him to organize a company, and he
did. He continued to work days and to drill his men in the twilight. He
would have been up and drilling at dawn if