d from the car roofs to
the platforms--the local did not boast any closed vestibules--and had
also been blown upon the car steps with the sweep of the wind, and,
having frozen, it stayed there. Not a very serious matter; annoying,
perhaps, but not serious, demanding a little extra caution, that was
all.

Toddles was in high fettle that night. He had been getting on famously
of late; even Bob Donkin had admitted it. Toddles, with his stack of
books and magazines, an unusually big one, for a number of the new
periodicals were out that day, was dreaming rosy dreams to himself as he
started from the door of the first-class smoker to the door of the
first-class coach. In another hour now he'd be up in the dispatcher's
room at Big Cloud for his nightly sitting with Bob Donkin. He could see
Bob Donkin there now; and he could hear the big dispatcher growl at him
in his bluff way: "Use your head--use your head--_Hoogan!_" It was
always "Hoogan," never "Toddles." "Use your head"--Donkin was
everlastingly drumming that into him; for the dispatcher used to
confront him suddenly with imaginary and hair-raising emergencies, and
demand Toddles' instant solution. Toddles realized that Donkin was
getting to the heart of things, and that some day he, Toddles, would be
a great dispatcher--like Donkin. "Use your head, Hoogan"--that's the way
Donkin talked--"anybody can learn a key, but that doesn't make a
railroad man think quick and think _right_. Use your----"

Toddles stepped out on the platform--and walked on ice. But that wasn't
Toddles' undoing. The trouble with Toddles was that he was walking on
air at the same time. It was treacherous running, they were nosing a
curve, and in the cab, Kinneard, at the throttle, checked with a little
jerk at the "air." And with the jerk, Toddles slipped; and with the
slip, the center of gravity of the stack of periodicals shifted, and
they bulged ominously from the middle. Toddles grabbed at them--and his
heels went out from under him. He ricocheted down the steps, snatched
desperately at the handrail, missed it, shot out from the train, and,
head, heels, arms and body going every which way at once, rolled over
and over down the embankment. And, starting from the point of Toddles'
departure from the train, the right of way for a hundred yards was
strewn with "the latest magazines" and "new books just out to-day."

Toddles lay there, a little, curled, huddled heap, motionless in the
darkness. The