to receive orders.

Swelled with pride at his success in driving the engine, Bob determined
to surprise the conductor by going back to the caboose alone.

And with a hearty good-bye to the engineer, he clambered over the
coal-stacked tender and up on to the top of a car.

The orders were to take a siding to allow a passenger train to pass,
and, as the time was short, the conductor was too busy sending his
brakemen to turn the switches and communicating the instructions to
the engineer, to think of Bob.

[Illustration: HE CLUTCHED FRANTICALLY AT ONE OF THE HAND BARS
_Bob Chester's Grit_ Page 123]

The boy, however, was making his way back slowly, but without mishap,
until the sudden start of the train. He had just climbed down from a
high car, and was swinging from it to an empty coal car, when the jerk
of starting ran through the line of cars.

So unexpected was this action, that Bob's feet slipped off the bumpers.

Crying out in alarm, he clutched frantically at one of the hand-bars on
the end of the coal car, caught it, and managed to draw himself up till
he found foothold on the extension of the floor where he stood, hanging
on for dear life, until the train stopped with another jerk.

CHAPTER XV

BOB EARNS HIS PASSAGE

All of a tremble at his narrow escape from falling under the car, Bob
was trying to recover his self-control before getting down from his
precarious position, when he was startled to hear a voice exclaim:

"I'll get even with that 'con' for putting me off the blind baggage, see
if I don't!"

The tone in which the words were uttered was so venomous, that Bob
realized the speaker meant mischief, though he was ignorant of the fact
that in the slang of tramps who beat their way on railroads, "con"
betokened conductor, and "blind baggage" the platform of the coach in a
passenger train nearest the engine.

Looking about to find out where the angry man was, Bob could see no one.

But the next instant another voice asking, "How you goin' to do it?"
decided him that the speakers must be crouching against the end of the
empty coal car to which he was holding.

How he had failed to discover them from the top of the other car, he
could not understand, but he soon ceased to wonder, in his eagerness to
catch every word uttered by the unseen tramps.

"That's easy," replied the voice the boy recognized as having made the
threat to "get even."

"Cut out tha