istful of change that he dug out of his pants pocket with his free
hand.

Toddles was in an unusually bad humor, and he scowled. With exceeding
deftness he separated one of the coins from the others, using his
fingers like the teeth of a rake, and dropped the rest back jingling
into his pocket. The coin that remained he put into his mouth, and bit
on it--hard. His scowl deepened. Somebody had presented Toddles with a
lead quarter.

It wasn't so much the quarter, though Toddles' salary wasn't so big as
some people's who would have felt worse over it, it was his _amour
propre_ that was touched--deeply. It wasn't often that any one could put
so bald a thing as lead money across on Toddles. Toddles' mind harked
back along the aisles of the cars behind him. He had only made two sales
that round, and he had changed a quarter each time--for the pretty girl
with the big picture hat, who had giggled at him when she bought a
package of chewing gum; and the man with the three-carat diamond tie-pin
in the parlor car, a little more than on the edge of inebriety, who had
got on at the last stop, and who had bought a cigar from him.

Toddles thought it over for a bit; decided he wouldn't have a fuss with
a girl anyway, balked at a parlor car fracas with a drunk, dropped the
coin back into his pocket, and went on into the combination baggage and
express car. Here, just inside the door, was Toddles', or, rather, the
News Company's chest. Toddles lifted the lid; and then his eyes shifted
slowly and traveled up the car. Things were certainly going badly with
Toddles that night.

There were four men in the car: Bob Donkin, coming back from a holiday
trip somewhere up the line; MacNicoll, the baggage-master; Nulty, the
express messenger--and Hawkeye. Toddles' inventory of the contents of
the chest had been hurried--but intimate. A small bunch of six bananas
was gone, and Hawkeye was munching them unconcernedly. It wasn't the
first time the big, hulking, six-foot conductor had pilfered the boy's
chest, not by many--and never paid for the pilfering. That was Hawkeye's
idea of a joke.

Hawkeye was talking to Nulty, elaborately simulating ignorance of
Toddles' presence--and he was talking about Toddles.

"Sure," said Hawkeye, his mouth full of banana, "he'll be a great
railroad man some day! He's the stuff they're made of! You can see it
sticking out all over him! He's only selling peanuts now till he grows
up and----"

Toddles put dow