Page:Cy Warman--The express messenger and other tales of the rail.djvu/224

212 get ten days for fast running. He was a hero, this man, begrimed as he was with soot and grease, for this was the engine, and he the engineer who had outrun the Atlantic express a year ago and saved that train, as well as the President's special.

The train-master came in with a sad face and a heavy heart. He remembered that it was just a year ago to-day that he had turned a pale-faced young woman away, not because there was no room for her, but (he blushed to admit it) because she was a woman. And now that same woman was doing a man's work. More, she could enslave him with a glance or bind him with a single strand of her silken hair. He knew this and knew that she knew it, and resolved not to let another day dawn before he had told her everything.

Miss Morgan was sad, too, for she had lost a secret,—not of her love, for that was no secret; but she had just revealed to the superintendent the true story of the "mysterious message." For a long time he had guessed that she knew something about it, but had refrained from calling her up for fear of forcing