to stand on and reach up for the lamp, and Toddles drew himself up and got his foot on it—and then at his full height the tips of his fingers only just touched the bottom of the lamp. Toddles cried aloud, and the tears streamed down his face now. Oh, if he weren't hurt—if he could only shin up another foot—but—but it was all he could do to hang there where he was.
What was that! He turned his head. Up the track, sweeping in a great circle as it swung the curve, a head-light's glare cut through the night—and Toddles "shinned" the foot. He tugged and tore at the lamp, tugged and tore at it, loosened it, lifted it from its socket, sprawled and wriggled with it to the ground—and turned the red side of the lamp against second Number Two.
The quick, short blasts of a whistle answered, then the crunch and grind and scream of biting brake-shoes—and the big mountain racer, the 1012, pulling the second section of the Limited that night, stopped with its pilot nosing a diminutive figure in a torn and silver-buttoned uniform, whose hair was clotted red, and whose face was covered with blood and dirt.
Masters, the engineer, and Pete Leroy, his fireman, swung from the gangways; Kelly, the conductor, came running up from the forward coach.
Kelly shoved his lamp into Toddles' face—and whistled low under his breath.
"Toddles!" he gasped; and then, quick as a steel trap: "What's wrong?"
"I don't know," said Toddles weakly. "There's—there's something wrong. Get into the clear—on the siding."
"Something wrong," repeated Kelly, "and you don't———"
But Masters cut the conductor short with a grab at the
