throat cut there; guess some reb has had hold of her," he continued,
as he held up the bill. Then laying it down, he took out his pocket-book
and cut off a little three-cornered strip of pink court-plaster, and
made repairs on the bill.

"Mother" pocketed her money greedily, and before an hour I had that very
bill in my pocket to pay the recording fees in the courthouse at M----.

The next day Jim wanted to use more money than he had in his pocket, and
asked me to lend him a dollar. As I opened my wallet to oblige him, that
patched bill showed up. Jim put his finger on it, and then turning me
around towards him, he said: "How came you by that?"

I turned red--I know I did--but I said, cool enough, "'Mother' gave it
to me in change."

"That's a lie," he said, and turned away.

The next day we were more than two-thirds of the way home before he
spoke; then, as I straightened up after a fire, he said: "John
Alexander, when we get in, you go to Aleck (the foreman) and get changed
to some other engine."

There was a queer look on his face; it was not anger, it was not
sorrow--it was more like pain. I looked the man straight in the eye, and
said: "All right, Jim; it shall be as you say--but, so help me God, I
don't know what for. If you will tell me what I have done that is wrong,
I will not make the same mistake with the next man I fire for."

He looked away from me, reached over and started the pump, and said:
"Don't you know?"

"No, sir, I have not the slightest idea."

"Then you stay, and I'll change," said he, with a determined look, and
leaned out of the window, and said no more all the way in.

I did not go home that day. I cleaned the "Roger William" from the top
of that mountain of sheet-iron known as a wood-burner stack to the back
casting on the tank, and tried to think what I had done wrong, or not
done at all, to incur such displeasure from Dillon. He was in bed when
I went to the house that evening, and I did not see him until breakfast.
He was in his usual spirits there, but on the way to the station, and
all day long, he did not speak to me. He noticed the extra cleaning, and
carefully avoided tarnishing any of the cabfittings;--but that awful
quiet! I could hardly bear it, and was half sick at the trouble, the
cause of which I could not understand. I thought that, if the patched
bill had anything to do with it, Christmas morning would clear it up.

Our return trip was the night express, leaving t