d Miss Laura, trying to see her way down the steps through her tears.

The man put out his hand and helped her. "He's not suffered much, miss,"
he said; "don't you distress yourself. Now if you'd been a brakeman on a
Chicago train, as I was a few years ago, and seen the animals run in for
the stock yards, you might talk about cruelty. Cars that ought to hold
a certain number of pigs, or sheep, or cattle, jammed full with twice
as many, and half of 'em thrown out choked and smothered to death. I've
seen a man running up and down, raging and swearing because the railway
people hadn't let him get in to tend to his pigs on the road."

Miss Laura turned and looked at the man with a very white face. "Is it
like that now?" she asked.

"No, no," he said, hastily. "It's better now. They've got new
regulations about taking care of the stock; but mind you, miss, the
cruelty to animals isn't all done on the railways. There's a great lot
of dumb creatures suffering all round everywhere, and if they could
speak 'twould be a hard showing for some other people besides the
railway men."

He lifted his cap and hurried down the platform, and Miss Laura, her
face very much troubled, picked her way among the bits of coal and wood
scattered about the platform, and went into the waiting room of the
little station.

She took me up to the filter and let some water run in her hand, and
gave it to me to lap. Then she sat down and I leaned my head against her
knees, and she stroked my throat gently.

There were some people sitting about the room, and, from their talk, I
found out what had taken place. There had been a freight train on a
side track at this station, waiting for us to get by. The switchman had
carelessly left the switch open after this train went by, and when we
came along afterward, our train, instead of running in by the platform,
went crashing into the freight train. If we had been going fast, great
damage might have been done. As it was, our engine was smashed so badly
that it could not take us on; the passengers were frightened; and we
were having a tedious time waiting for another engine to come and take
us to Riverdale.

After the accident, the trainmen were so busy that Miss Laura could get
no one to release me.

While I sat by her, I noticed an old gentleman staring at us. He was
such a queer-looking old gentleman. He looked like a poodle. He had
bright brown eyes, and a pointed face, and a shock of white hair that