Page:Ralph on the Railroad.djvu/125

Rh his post, and that the anticipated "turning of the tables" was not destined to materialize.

"What's the rights of things, Denny?" asked one of the engineers. "That was little Nora Forgan, wasn't it!"

"Sure—and you know what she is to gruff old Tim, apple of his eye. If anything happened to her, I believe he'd go mad."

"He's pretty near there now, with his tantrums!" volunteered a voice from the crowd.

"I think this will cure him a bit," said Denny. "The little one has been bringing him his dinner lately, you know. A child like that has no business along the tracks, but he usually had her come back of the roundhouse, where there wasn't so much risk. This time, I suppose she feared she'd be late, and crossed over the busiest switches. My heart stood still, lads, when, ten minutes since, five hundred feet away from her, I saw her trip, fall, strike her head on the rails, and lay there stunned, squarely in the way of a dead-end freight, coming."

Big Denny squirmed with real feeling in his powerful, husky voice, as he dabbed the perspiration from his brow.

"Next thing, I saw a flash come out through the roundhouse door here. It was—him!"

Mechanically the crowd turned. Twenty pairs