ight she chased the Acton runaways down the line to save Georgie
Sinclair and No. 1.

[Illustration: "THAT WAS BURNS'S FIRING THAT NIGHT"]

It was a frightful pace--how frightful no one ever knew; neither old man
Sinclair nor Dick Burns ever cared. Only, the crew of a freight,
side-tracked for the approaching Flyer, saw an engine flying light; knew
the hunter and the quarry, for they had seen the runaways shoot by--saw
then, a minute after, a star and a streak and a trail of rotten smoke
fly down the wind, and she had come and passed and gone.

It was just east of that siding, so Burns and Sinclair always
maintained--but it measured ten thousand feet east--that they caught
them.

A shout from Dad brought the dripping fireman up standing, and looking
ahead he saw in the blaze of their own headlight the string of coalers
standing still ahead of them. So it seemed to him, their own speed was
so great, and the runaways were almost equalling it. They were making
forty miles an hour when they dashed past the paralyzed freight crew.

Without waiting for orders--what orders did such a man need?--without a
word, Burns crawled out of his window with a pin, and ran forward on the
foot-board, clinging the best he could, as the engine dipped and
lurched, climbed down on the cow-catcher, and lifted the pilot-bar to
couple. It was a crazy thing to attempt; he was much likelier to get
under the pilot than to succeed; yet he tried it.

Then it was that the fine hand of Dad Sinclair came into play. To temper
the speed enough, and just enough; to push her nose just enough, and far
enough for Burns to make the draw-bar of the runaway--that was the
nicety of the big seamed hands on the throttle and on the air; the very
magic of touch which, on a slender bar of steel, could push a hundred
tons of flying metal up, and hold it steady in a play of six inches on
the teeth of the gale that tore down behind him.

Again and again Burns tried to couple and failed. Sinclair, straining
anxiously ahead, caught sight of the headlight of No. 1 rounding
O'Fallon's bluffs.

He cried to Burns, and, incredible though it seems, the fireman heard.
Above all the infernal din, the tearing of the flanges and the roaring
of the wind, Burns heard the cry; it nerved him to a supreme effort. He
slipped the eye once more into the draw, and managed to drop his pin. Up
went his hand in signal.

Choking the steam, Sinclair threw the brake-shoes flaming against