down for a boy of his length,
but it was the very best position he could have taken if he had known
what was coming.

Known what was coming?

Yes, there was a pig coming.

That was all, but it was quite enough, considering what that pig was
about to do. He was going where he chose, just then, and he chose not
to turn out for the railway train.

"What a whistle!" Ford Foster had just exclaimed. "It sounds more like
the squeal of an iron pig than anything else. I----"

But at that instant there came a great jolt and a shock, and Ford
found himself suddenly tumbled, all in a heap, on the seat where his
feet had been. Then came bounce after bounce and the sound of breaking
glass, and then a crash.

"Off the track!" shouted Ford, as he sprang to his feet. "I wouldn't
have missed it for anything, but I do hope nobody's killed."

In the tremendous excitement of the moment he could hardly have told
how he got out of that car, but it did not seem ten seconds till
he was standing beside the conductor and engineer, looking at the
battered engine as it lay on its side in a deep ditch. The baggage
car, just behind it, was broken all to pieces, but the passenger cars
did not seem to have suffered very much, and nobody was badly hurt, as
the engineer and fireman had jumped off in time.

"This train'll never get in on time," said Ford to the conductor, a
little later. "How'll I get to the city?"

"Well," replied the railway man, who was not in the best of humors, "I
don't suppose the city could do without you overnight. The junction
with the main road is only two miles ahead, and if you're a good
walker you may catch a train there."

Some of the other passengers, none of whom were very much hurt, had
made the same discovery, and in a few minutes more there was a long,
straggling procession of uncomfortable people marching by the side
of the railway track, under the hot sun, The conductor was right,
however, and nearly all of them managed to make the two miles to the
junction in time.

Mr. Ford Foster was among the very first to arrive, and he was likely
to reach home in very fair season in spite of the pig.

As for his danger, he had hardly thought of that, and he would not
have missed so important an adventure for anything he could think of,
just then.

It was to a great, pompous, stylish, crowded, "up-town
boarding-house," that Ford's return was to take him. There was no
wonder at all that wise people should wish to