at them
from the top of a lumber car, and the day's work was over, all but
clearing a great blocked culvert, lest an unexpected thaw or rain
might flood the right of way. To these men it was all in the day's
work and unconscious passengers snored away in their berths, unknowing
of the heroic toil their safety required.

So Pete walked slowly, his grizzled head bent against the blast as he
struggled between the metals, listening. At a sudden shrieking roar he
moved deliberately to one side, his back resting against a bank of
snow left by the giant circular plough whose progress, on the previous
day, had been that of a slow but irresistible avalanche. A crashing
whistle tore the air and the wind of the rushing train pulled at his
clothes and swirled sharp flakes into his eyes. Yet he dimly saw
something white flutter down to his feet and he picked it up. It
chanced to be a paper tossed out by some careless hand, a rather
disreputable sheet printed some thousand miles away, one of the things
that lie like scabs on the outer hide of civilization. It was much too
dark and cold for him to think of removing a mitten and searching for
the glasses in his coat pocket. But the respect is great, in waste
places, for the printed word. There news of the great outside world
trickles in slowly, and he carefully stuffed the thing between two of
the big horn buttons of his red-striped mackinaw.

There were but a few minutes more of toil for him. At last he passed
over the bridge, in a flurry of swirling ice-crystals, and finally
made his way into McGurn's store, which is across the way from the
railway depot.

"Cold night," he announced, stamping his feet near the door.

"Follansbee he says they report fifty below at White River," a man
sitting by the stove informed him.

Coogan nodded and approached the counter.

"Give me a plug, Miss Sophy," he told the girl who sat at a rough
counter, adding figures. "The wind's gettin' real sharp and I got the
nose most friz off'n my face."

The girl rose, with a yawn, and handed him the tobacco. She swept his
ten-cent piece in a drawer and sat down again. One of the men lounging
about the great white-topped stove in the middle of the room pointed
to Coogan's coat.

"Ye're that careless, Pete," he said. "I 'low that's a bundle o'
thousand dollar bills as is droppin' off'n yer coat."

The old section foreman looked down.

"Oh! I'd most forgot. This here's some kind o' paper I picked up o