Page:Ralph on the Railroad.djvu/390

92 engineers, and brakemen in the vicinity. They shouted after the scurrying fugitive, they even tried to head him off for an explanation. Slavin, however, lost to reason for the moment, made a mad bee-line for Railroad Street, and disappeared behind some freight sheds.

Ralph hailed a roundhouse hand carrying a bucket of oil.

"Shut the lower door, will you?" he asked.

The man did so. It operated on a spring, and all he had to do was to detach a hook from a staple that held it open.

"Slip the padlock," continued Ralph.

"Why, that will lock you in!" exclaimed the bewildered oilman.

"That's all right," answered Ralph. "Thanks."

He smiled to himself as he answered some switch calls. The smile broadened as he ran over the exciting incidents of the hour.

Young Slavin was probably more scared than hurt. In his muddled condition, amid the semi-darkness of the lower tower room he might not have discerned or realized what had attacked him.

"He will report me a demon, and his friends will think me one, if he shows up in those tatters, laying his plight to my charge," smiled Ralph. "Well, I fancy 'the young Hercules' has got all the satisfaction he wants for the present."