t with no success. Then he swung around the southern route,
up the Atlantic coast and home again. Three years,--one year with the
strikers,--four years in all of idleness, and he was discouraged. "It's
the curse of the prison," he used to say to his most intimate friends;
"the damp of that dungeon clings to me like a plague. It's a blight from
which I can't escape. Every one seems to know that I was arrested as a
dynamiter, and even my old friends shun me."

He had been saying something like that to Patsy Daly the very day he
returned to Chicago. They were walking down through the yards, for
Patsy, who was close to the officials, had insisted upon going
personally to the master-mechanic, and interceding for the old engineer
who had carried him thousands of miles while the world slept, and the
wild storm raged around them. Patsy had been telling the old engineer
the news of the road, but was surprised that Moran should seem to know
all that had taken place, the changes and promotions, the vast
improvements that had been made by the company, and the rapidly growing
traffic. Patsy stopped short, and looking his companion in the eye,
began to laugh.

"Now what in thunder are you laughing at?" asked Moran.

"At Patsy Daly, the luny," said the conductor (Patsy had been promoted);
"why, of course you know everything. I've been rooming at the house, and
I remember now that _she_ always knew just where you were at all times.
Ah! ye sly old rogue--"

"Patsy," said Moran, seriously, putting up his hand as a signal for
silence.

"That's all right, old man. She deserves a decent husband, but it'll be
something new to her. Say, Dan, a fool has less sense than anybody, an'
Patsy Daly's a fool. Here have I been at the point of making love to her
myself, and only her tears and that big boy of hers have kept me from
it. And all the time I thought she was wastin' water on that
blatherskite of a Cowels, but I think better of her now."

"And why should she weep for any one else?" asked the old engineer.

"And why shouldn't she weep for you, Dannie? wandering up and down the
earth, homeless and alone. Why I remember now. She would cry in her
coffee at the mention of your name. And Dan, she's growin' prettier
every day, and she's that gentle and--"

Just then the wild scream of a yard engine close behind them caused them
to step aside.

"Wope!" cried a switchman, bang bang went the bell--"Look out there,"
yelled Patsy, for as the t