? I ain't got no home. Drunk? Yes, I been drunk
lots o' times, but I ain't drunk now. Honest, I ain't teched a drop
to-day. Got a bot about you, ol' man? Say, if you have, fur th' love o'
life gimme a drop--half a drop--Dan, I'm all afire inside."

It was an awful picture that Moran looked upon now. The bloated face,
the sunken, blood-shot eyes, the blazing, hideous nose, burning in the
iron-gray stubble, all topped by a shock of tousled, unkempt hair, made
a picture horrible in the extreme.

"Say!" Greene began again, glancing toward the door, "meet me at seven
thirty to-morrow night, on the 'rep' track near the round-house, an'
I'll show you a trick."

"What sort of trick will you show me?"

With another look over his shoulder at the door the drunkard leaned
over the table and whispered. When the old engineer had gathered what
the man had said he got to his feet, took his midnight caller by the
collar and lead him to the top of the stairs. Greene was opposed to
leaving the cheerful room, so Moran was obliged to go with him to the
street door. Having put the wreck out into the frosty night the engineer
went back to his book. But he could not read. That awful face into which
he had looked, and the black soul that he had seen as well, haunted him.
He sat with his feet upon the table and smoked pipe after pipe, in a
vain effort to drive the frightful picture from his mind. The news that
Greene had brought disturbed him also. His fireman was going to desert
the Brotherhood, and take their old engine out.

Blackwings! How he loved that locomotive, and how absurd it seemed now
for a man to become so attached to a mere machine! But she was not
inanimate. She lived, moved, breathed. How often, as they swept beneath
the stars of an autumn night, had he felt her hot breath upon his face,
heard the steel singing beneath her feet and felt her tremble,
responsive to his lightest touch. How wild and free and glad she had
seemed, let loose in the moonlight with the Limited behind her. How
gracefully, easily, she lifted the huge, vestibuled train from swale to
swell. How she always passed station after station on the tick of the
clock, keeping to the time-card, unvarying as the sun. Proud and
queenly, yet gentle, she always answered the signals of the less
fortunate locomotives that stood panting on the side tracks, with their
heavy loads. Even the Meteor, the engine that wore white flags and
pulled the president's private car, a