d out and waved to the engineer, he darted off like
lightning. He had his steam up, and he just scuttled.

"Well, he was so excited for a while that he couldn't tell whether the
Express was gaining on him or not; but after twenty or thirty miles, he
thought he heard it pretty near. Of course the Express locomotive was
drawing a heavy train of cars, and it had to make a stop or two--at
Charlestown, and at Concord Junction, and at Ayer--so the Pony Engine
did really gain on it a little; and when it began to be scared it gained
a good deal. But the first place where it began to feel sorry, and to
want its mother, was in Hoosac Tunnel. It never was in a tunnel before,
and it seemed as if it would never get out. It kept thinking, What if
the Pacific Express was to run over it there in the dark, and its mother
off there at the Fitchburg Depot, in Boston, looking for it among the
side-tracks? It gave a perfect shriek; and just then it shot out of the
tunnel. There were a lot of locomotives loafing around there at North
Adams, and one of them shouted out to it as it flew by, 'What's your
hurry, little one?' and it just screamed back, 'Pacific Express!' and
never stopped to explain. They talked in locomotive language--"

"Oh, what did it sound like?" the boy asked.

"Well, pretty queer; I'll tell you some day. It knew it had no time to
fool away, and all through the long, dark night, whenever, a locomotive
hailed it, it just screamed, 'Pacific Express!' and kept on. And the
Express kept gaining on it. Some of the locomotives wanted to stop it,
but they decided they had better not get in its way, and so it whizzed
along across New York State and Ohio and Indiana, till it got to
Chicago. And the Express kept gaining on it. By that time it was so
hoarse it could hardly whisper, but it kept saying, 'Pacific Express!
Pacific Express!' and it kept right on till it reached the Mississippi
River. There it found a long train of freight cars before it on the
bridge. It couldn't wait, and so it slipped down from the track to the
edge of the river and jumped across, and then scrambled up the
embankment to the track again."

"Papa!" said the little girl, warningly.

"Truly it did," said the papa.

"Ho! that's nothing," said the boy. "A whole train of cars did it in
that Jules Verne book."

"Well," the papa went on, "after that it had a little rest, for the
Express had to wait for the freight train to get off the bridge, and the
Pony