Page:Harry Castlemon - The Steel Horse.djvu/312

 exclaimed the landlord, almost fiercely. "Bless my heart! I've a good notion to come out from behind the desk and shake the last one of you boys, and I can do it too, old as I am. I've just heard about it. Why didn't you wake me up last night, instead of going to bed there on the platform?"

Roy tried to explain that they did not want to disturb him after he had gone to bed (he didn't say why), and that their blankets afforded them as soft a bed as they cared for, but the old man did so much talking himself that Roy finally gave it up. He listened while the landlord told that the men on the up-train, as well as the passengers they had seen go by the dining-room window, had brought a full report of last night's doings, and he wanted to give them a breakfast to pay them for it, because he would have felt bad if that train had run into the rock and been smashed up.

"I always did look upon wheelmen as a nuisance," said he, with refreshing candor. "They eat you out of house and home, and the fifty cents you charge 'em for it don't begin to pay for the damage they do; but now I