d, and gave him his toy
watch, and asked him please to give it to That Man who had saved his
mamma's life by running so far in the rain, and please to tell him how
much obliged he was--if he would be so kind.

So the little toy watch came to our superintendent, and so to me; and I,
sitting at Cameron's bedside, talking the wreck over with Ben, gave it
to him; and the big fellow looked as pleased as if it had been a
jewelled chronometer; indeed, that was the only medal Ben got.

The truth is we had no gold medals to distribute out on the West End in
those days. We gave Ben the best we had, and that was a passenger run.
But he is a great fellow among the railroad men. And on stormy nights
switchmen in the Zanesville yards, smoking in their shanties, still tell
of that night, that storm, and how Ben Buckley threw Second
Seventy-Seven at the foot of Beverly Hill.

The Kid Engineer

When the big strike caught us at Zanesville we had one hundred and
eighty engineers and firemen on the pay-roll. One hundred and
seventy-nine of these men walked out. One fireman--just one--stayed with
the company; that was Dad Hamilton.

"Yes," growled Dad, combating the protests of the strikers' committee,
"I know it. I belong to your lodge. But I'll tell you now--an' I've told
you afore--I ain't goin' to strike on the company so long as Neighbor is
master-mechanic on this division. Ain't a-goin' to do it, an' you might
as well quit. 'F you jaw here from now till Christmas 'twon't change my
mind nar a bit."

And they didn't change it. Through the calm and through the storm--and
it stormed hard for a while--Dad Hamilton, whenever we could supply him
with an engineer, fired religiously.

No other man in the service could have done it without getting killed;
but Dad was old enough to father any man among the strikers. Moreover,
he was a giant physically, and eccentric enough to move along through
the heat of the crisis indifferent to the abuse of the other men. His
gray hairs and his tremendous physical strength saved him from personal
violence.

Our master-mechanic, "Neighbor," was another big man--six feet an inch
in his stockings, and strong as a draw-bar. Between Neighbor and the old
fireman there existed some sort of a bond--a liking, an affinity. Dad
Hamilton had fired on our division ten years. There was no promotion for
Dad; he could never be an engineer, though only Neighbor knew why. But
his job of firing on the river d