engine. Maitland shouted a warning to his fireman and opened the throttle wide. He was thankful now that he knew Old Rusty's every strength and weakness. As never before he coaxed her to show her utmost speed. Death was roaring behind him.

As they neared the first station, Maitland looked out of the cab and saw the white-faced operator on the platform, frantically waving them forward. There was no hearing what he said, but his meaning was clear enough. Cld Rusty made six miles in less than eight minutes. But the runaway was gaining; she would overtake them within the next six miles.

"Stay right here, Jack, and keep the throttle wide open!" Maitland suddenly roared to his fireman.

He dashed from the cab, climbed over the tender and into the baggage car. In a second he had a stout trunk strap in his hand. He rushed through the forward car. The president and his guests stood up, white and silent. They thought that Maitland had come to warn them to prepare for an awful shock.

"Follow me!" cried Maitland to the conductor. The two men made for the platform of the car next to the last.

To uncouple cars when a train is moving slowly is not a very difficult task; but with an engine tearing along, few men would care to attempt it. Buckling the trunk strap round his waist that the conductor might hold him, Maitland tugged at the coupling. Even when he had managed to free the last car, it had such headway that it did not at once desert the train; but presently it fell behind a trap for the wild engine. Then Maitland raced back to Old Rusty, while the conductor explained to the officials how their lives had been saved.

Only a minute or two later the crash came. The pilot of the runaway struck the uncoupled car and then rose in the air. There was a frightful roar of escaping steam, heard above the grinding of wood and iron, and then the engine rolled over on its side. Strangest of all, Hepburn, the mad engineer, flung out of the cab at the first shock, escaped with only a broken leg.

Old Rusty went speeding on; not until the next station was reached, three miles ahead, did Maitland stop. Then the president got out of his car and hurried up to the engine.

"Come out of that cab," he said.

Maitland got down, and every man, beginning with the president, shook hands with him. But no one said a word no one felt talkative just then.

“Oh, yes, the president and directors gave Maitland a check for a thousand dollars," said the old engineer who told the story; "they said Old Rusty never should be broken up while they controlled the road. But the worst of it was that two years after that they made Maitland division superintendent. It was a sin to take so good an engineer off an engine! A first-class engineer isn't born every day!"

3. FIREMAN GANNET

ANONYMOUS

On the payroll of the M. C. Railroad, he was plain Charles Gannet, Fireman, but he was destined to get a great opportunity to "make good." This is how it came about.

The two termini of the road, now grown to be "sixth" cities, demanded ten-hour trains instead of the twelve-hour expresses that had previously been their pride. Five new Pacific type locomotives of superb dimensions had been purchased for service on the "Limited" trains. The new engines were put on local service for two weeks to limber them up, and then they were to be given fast runs. Number 3115, however, was placed in Limited service in a week's time, because of the wrecking of the old engine which hauled the "Autocrat." as the Limited train was called.

On the night of 3115's third trip at the head of six shining Pullmans, the weather seemed to be determined to make her task a Herculean one. A roaring northwest gale swept in over the prairies and the great lake, driving angry needles of sleet in spluttering volleys against the cab windows. The electric arclights, under the train shed which sheltered the Pullmans, swayed and blinked in the swirling ice storm which tore up the platforms and lost itself among the strings of coaches waiting on deserted tracks.

Ten o'clock with the first stroke of the great station clock, two sharp hisses sounded in the darkened cab of 3115, and Frank O'Neil and Charles Gannet, engineer and fireman, straightened

their backs and set themselves for a seven hours' run. The great engine barked twice; then came a furious snorting and a shower of sparks as the drivers spun around on the sleety rails. O'Neil's master-hand quickly eased the head of steam in the cylinders, and 3115 crept cautiously over the switches and frogs, past winking green and red lights toward the throat of the yard.

Six toasted Pullmans with dusted chairs and polished brass glided quietly out into the roaring storm. The barks of the locomotive grew louder and then dropped to a muffled throb as O'Neil hooked her back on the reverse lever. The last switch clicked by, and the green and red lights whisked past as O'Neil settled back on his wooden shelf and opened the throttle another notch.

The wind roared back along the great black boiler and drove clouds of steam and smoke scudding past the window that was half closed to keep the sleet from bruising O'Neil's face and body. Above the throb of the exhaust, the roll of the sleet driving against the cab made inaudible all but the shrillest shrieks of the wind. Gannet was pulling open the chains of the furnace door, and shovelling great scoops of coal into the white-hot furnace. Each time he opened the furnace doors, the light turned the sleet to a golden shower, and the smoke and steam clouds to great pink banners in the sky. The little gauge lamp bobbed and blinked at the two silent figures, one motionless in his seat, gazing into the outer darkness, the other bending and swinging like a piece of machinery. Ten tons of coal were to be fed into the bottomless furnace; no child's play that, on a lurching, jumping express engine! A curve, and the right side of the cab rises suddenly and shakes and quivers as if to tear itself from some terrific force.

Back in the Pullmans, men with cigars in their mouths converse in languid tones, and yawn. In the car behind, two children. scamper down the aisle to get a cup of water, and come trudging back to their mother with a brimming cup. Two men across the aisle have had the porter set a table upon which they are playing chess, with occasional interruptions as the children bump the tables. The white beam of the electric headlight sways along the track, and greets each bridge or culvert with a fleeting wink. The glass on O'Neil's window is now glazed with ice, and after tugging his cap tighter over his ears and turning the visor lower

over his eyes, he slides the protecting shield aside, and faces the jagged bolts of ice that shriek around the boiler head and burst to fragments when they hit the window-frame. Gannet has been trying the injectors and wipes the sweat from his face so that he may get a look at the quivering needle on the steam gauge. One hundred and ninety-six pounds of steam; not enough 210 is what she could carry. He swings open the furnace doors and piles scoopful upon scoopful of coal into the flames. As Gannet straightens his back once more, he sees O'Neil's nostrils dilate as he draws his head in from the pelting outside. O'Neil's left hand swings the long lever forward and his right "feels” the air.

"Whr Whr "he shouts above the roar to Gannet. Gannet jumps to the gangway on his side of the cab and looks back. "Wrr-whr-r" he shouts back. The engine stiffens forward in the grasp of the air-brakes and the Pullmans grrrrrr-rr as the big bogy trucks feel the grip. Before the train has come to a full stop, Gannet has disappeared through the gangway on his side of the cab. O'Neil follows with a monkey-wrench. The wind rips open his coat and his hat is switched off his head. The wrench in his hand becomes slippery with ice. A tender truckwheel has a hot box because it was not run in long enough in local service. Gannet has pulled the flaming waste and grease out of the journal box and is busy repacking it. A hose is screwed into one side of the box so that water from the tender can keep it cool. The conductor comes staggering up in a rubber coat. Back in the Pullmans, a passenger suddenly takes his feet from the window-sill, and leans forward to peer out into the dark.

"Why, the train has stopped," he exclaims in amazement "I wonder how long we have been here? Where are we?" Then harsh criticism is leveled at the road for wretched service and delays.

Outside, two drenched, sleet-covered figures toil over a bent hose-coupling. After twenty minutes of finger skinning with the frozen wrench, the coupling is screwed in. Two sharp blasts from the engine-whistle call back the brakeman, who has been leaning against the platform of the last car, sheltered from the sleet and valiantly holding a red lantern.

O'Neil, stiff and all but frozen, sits propped up on the right

side of the cab, his bleeding face peering out into the driving ice, as 3115, steaming to her limit through Gannet's superb efforts, is making up lost time.

A roar, a dull rumble, and the clicking of switches startles Gannet as he is reaching for the "injector choke valve." He looks quickly at O'Neil, who is still leaning out of the window.

Gannet knows that they should never take the D-t viaduct at any such speed as they are going now. He pulls O'Neil's arm; it falls limp by his side, and O'Neil's head nods forward on the window-seat. Quick as a flash, Gannet snaps the throttle shut and gives her a pinch of air to steady the train. As the engine rolls smoothly at reduced speed, he pulls O'Neil down to the cab floor.

Unconscious, pummeled and slashed by the ice, clothes frozen on his body, O'Neil falls stiffly to the floor. Gannet, neglecting the sorry condition of his engineer, gazes intently ahead through the swirling sleet at the ever changing signal lights. Soon the yard is past, and as the last switch clicks under wheel and its green light sweeps by, Gannet steps down on the cab floor, and tenderly lifts O'Neil's limp form over to the left side of the cab, and there, wrapped in the canvas storm curtain which Gannet has torn from its hooks, O'Neil rests in a heap.

As soon as Gannet sees that there is no danger of O'Neil's tumbling to the floor through the sudden lurching of the engine, he again goes over to the right side. Peering ahead for a moment to get his bearings and seeing a signal light go by, in frenzied haste he shovels some coal into the half empty firebox. Then he opens the try-cocks and after running the injectors until the water is at the top cock, he pulls the throttle open to the last notch and 3115 paws over the steel in a way to make many a passenger engineer blanch with fear.

How Gannet acted as engineer and fireman on the "Autocrat" that night is a golden page in railroad history. Now raking and feeding the fire, now trying the injectors, now peering out of the cab window into the murderous rain and sleet, and then glancing at the steam and air gauges, Gannet did the work of two men, jumping, staggering in the cab of the roaring engine. Twice in his fleeting glances out of the cab window he saw the