n had gone by.

But the one-armed flagman and other railroad employees let the old
gentleman understand beyond peradventure that he had barely escaped a
dreadful accident. He had been about to step directly in the path of the
backing freight train.

"My, my, my!" he exclaimed at last, "'tisn't possible!"

"It just is possible!" retorted the one-armed flagman. "One minute more
and you'd've been ground to powder like as not if it hadn't been for
that there girl. Some spunk, she's got."

"Some quick thinkin' she done!" exclaimed another of the employees. "Man
alive, you wouldn't have no head on your shoulders right now if she
hadn't knowed what to do at once and done it instanter. No siree!"

"My! my! my!" said the old gentleman again. "That girl then saved my
life! Possibly saved me from a worse fate--to live on through the years
maimed and mutilated."

Just then the train for which the old gentleman was waiting came in
sight and soon drew up at the Milton station.

"Then I really owe that girl an apology," he went on. "Who is she? Does
she live here!" he asked one of the bystanders.

"Sure she lives here."

"Well, I can't stop to-day. I've got to hurry. But I shall look her up
the next time I come this way. Oh, yes indeed, I shall look her up! For
a girl she certainly showed good sense."

"I don't know whether she did or not," scoffed the man to whom he spoke,
but under his breath. "You don't look as though you were such a lot of
use in the world, if you ask me. I bet you're a Tartar!"

Ruth Kenway, however, did not expect to be thanked. The old gentleman
with the green umbrella passed out of her mind for the time being
before she reached home. And there she found the assembled young folks
in the throes of a discussion regarding Tess and Sammy's proposed aerial
tramway.

"_Do_ call it 'tramway,'" begged Agnes. "It sounds so awfully English,
don't you know!"

"It sounds so awfully foolish, don't you know," said Neale O'Neil, who
had come over the fence from Mr. Con Murphy's yard and sat on the stoop
regaling himself upon a summer apple he had picked on his way. "Have a
summer sweetnin', Ag?"

"I do wish you would call her by her right name, Neale," said Ruth,
sharply, for she did not approve of Neale's slang.

"Dear me! 'What's in a name?' to quote the Immortal Bard," drawled the
youth.

"A good deal sometimes," chuckled Agnes, who did not much mind having
her name shortened. "Wait till I look up in m