ay. Is that the dying shriek of the blasted hussy?"

Tom stopped the imminent expectoration.

"It be," he announced, and went out on the track to welcome the guest.

"She do look," he contemplatively remarked, "like she had an all-fired
jag on."

The train came in sight, swaying unsteadily on its rickety tracks.
Puffing, panting and hissing, it reached the platform and stopped
jerkily.

Murphy sprang from the engine; the conductor strode with dignity worthy
a Pullman official, to the one passenger coach behind the baggage car,
and assisted a very young and very sickly man to alight.

Tom Smith, with energy concentrated on this single activity of the
twenty-four hours, began hurling mail-bag and boxes about with the
abandon that marks the man whom Nature has fitted to his legitimate
calling.

Filmer eyed the passenger with disapproving interest; Murphy, after
looking at some part of the machinery, lolled up to Jock.

"Is that it?" Filmer nodded toward the stranger, who sat exhaustedly
upon a cracker-box, destined for the Black Cat, with his suit-case at
his feet.

"It ain't, then," Murphy returned. "It got on the Branch 'stead of the
Mountain Special, by mistake. It's a lunger bound for the lakes, and
some one gave him a twist as to the track an' we caught 'im. But shure,
the rale thing, the parson, when I was after tellin' 'im of the job what
was at this end of the game, he up and balked--divil take 'im!--an' said
he wasn't goin' to tie for time and eternity, two unknown quantities.
What do ye think of that?"

Jock thought hotly of it, and expressed his thought so fervidly that the
boy on the cracker-box gave attention.

"Say," Murphy continued, "give it straight, Filmer; does it be after
meanin' life or death for Birkdale's girl? What's the almighty hurry,
anyway?"

He leered unpleasantly. Jock squared himself, and faced the engineer.

"Come off with that guff!" he drawled. "What hurry there be is _my_
hurry, you blamed idiot! And my reasons are my own, confound you! I've
set my mind on having that affair come off to-morrow, gol durn it, and
I'm going to have a parson if I have to dangle down to the Junction on
that old machine of yours, myself."

A few added words of luridly picturesque intent gave force and colour to
this declaration.

The stranger on the cracker-box rose weakly and drew near.

"Excuse me," he began, in a voice of peculiar sweetness and earnestness,
"I wonder if I can be of any s