twenty years
in an engine cab could stand the steam that poured on him where he lay?

Neighbor, just outside, flashing a light, heard the labored strain of
his breathing, saw him getting half up, bend to the bar, and saw the
iron give like lead in his hands as he pried mightily.

Neighbor heard, and told me long afterwards, how the old man flung the
bar away with an imprecation, and cried for one to help him; for a
minute meant a life now--the boy lying pinned under the shattered cab
was roasting in a jet of live steam. The master-mechanic crept in.

By signs Dad told him what to do, and then, getting on his knees,
crawled straight into the dash of the white jet--crawled into it, and
got the cab on his shoulders.

Crouching an instant, the giant muscles of his back set in a tremendous
effort. The wreckage snapped and groaned, the knotted legs slowly and
painfully straightened, the cab for a passing instant rose in the air,
and in that instant Neighbor dragged Georgie McNeal from out the vise of
death, and passed him, like a pinch-bar, to the men waiting next behind.
Then Neighbor pulled Dad back, blind now and senseless. When they got
the old fireman out he made a pitiful struggle to pull himself together.
He tried to stand up, but the sweat broke over him and he sank in a heap
at Neighbor's feet.

[Illustration: "THE CAB FOR A PASSING INSTANT ROSE IN THE AIR"]

That was the saving of Georgie McNeal, and out there they will still
tell you about that lift of Dad Hamilton's.

We put him on the cot at the hospital next to his engineer. Georgie,
dreadfully bruised and scalded, came on fast in spite of his hurts. But
the doctor said Dad had wrenched a tendon in that frightful effort, and
he lay there a very sick and very old man long after the young engineer
was up and around telling of his experience.

"When we cleared the chutes I saw white signals, I thought," he said to
me at Dad's bedside. "I knew we had the right of way over everything. It
was a hustle, anyway, on that schedule, Mr. Reed; you know that; an
awful hustle, with our load. I never choked her a notch to run the
yards; didn't mean to do it with the Junction grade to climb just ahead
of us. But I looked out again, and, by hokey! I thought I'd gone crazy,
got color-blind--red signals! Of course I thought I must have been wrong
the first time I looked. I choked her, I threw the air, I dumped the
gravel. Heavens! she never felt it! I couldn't figure how