man without a nod. Then he was "Old
Bill;" now they called him Billy.

In his palmy days he had wooed, and won the heart of Maggie Crogan, a
pretty waitress in the railway eating-house at Zero Junction. Maggie was
barely eighteen then, a strawberry blonde with a sunny smile and a
perpetual blush. In less than a year he had broken her heart, wrecked
her life and sent her adrift in the night. His only excuse was that he
was madly in love with Nora Kelly, but Nora, having heard the story of
Maggie's miserable life, turned her back on Greene and married George
Cowels, then a young apprentice in the shops. Inasmuch as it was about
the only commendable thing he ever did, it should be put to Greene's
credit that he did really love Nora Kelly; but, being a coward with an
inherited thirst, he took to drink the day she turned him down; and now,
after a few wasted years he and Maggie--old red-headed Mag they called
her--had drifted together, pooled their sorrows and often tried to drown
them in the same can of beer. She worked, when she worked at all, at
cleaning coaches. He borrowed her salary and bought drink with it. Once
he proposed marriage, and ended by beating her because she laughed at
him.

Before the strike he had been forced to keep sober four days out of a
week. Now he was comfortably tanked at all times. He had been a
machinist and round-house foreman, and the company saw in him a fair
"emergency" engineer, and was constantly watching for an opportunity to
try him on one of the fast express trains.

At last he was called to take out a passenger run. The round-house
foreman had gone personally to fetch "Billy" from the bar-room near the
Grand Pacific where he was waiting for a Brotherhood man to drop in and
buy him a drink. When told that he was wanted to take out the Pacific
express, the bum straightened up, hitched his suspenderless trousers and
asked: "Who're you?"

"I'm the foreman; come and have a bite o' breakfast and let's be off."

"Well--folks gen'ly drink afore they eat--come on, le's have a horn.
Here, bar-keep, give us a couple o' slugs."

"Got any dough?"

"Now don't git gay--I'm goin' down to take me run out--here's me
foreman."

"But you must not drink," broke in the official, "when you are going out
on an express train."

"What?"

"You must not drink."

"Then I don't work. Th' Brotherhood 'll pay me four dollars a day to sit
right here and keep three gages an' a flutter in the stack--go o