-house platform they find other boys. Some of them have
waited up all night so as not to miss it. They are from across the
tracks. They have all the fun, those fellows do. They can swear and chew
tobacco, and play hookey from school and have a good time. They get
to go barefoot before anybody else, and nobody tells them it will thin
their blood to go in swimming so much. Yes, and they can fight, too.
They'd sooner fight than eat. Our boys, conscious of inferiority, keep
to themselves. The boys from across the tracks show off all the bad
words they can think of. One of them has a mouth-harp which he plays
upon, now and then opening his hands hollowed around the instrument.
Patsy Gubbins dances to the music, which is a thing even more reckless
and daredevil than swearing. Patsy's going with a "troupe" some day. Or
else, he's going to get a job firing on an engine. He isn't right sure
which he wants to do the most.

Now and then a brakeman goes by swinging his lantern. The boys would
like to ask him what time it is, but for one thing they're too bashful.
Being a brakeman is almost as good as going with a "troupe" or a circus.
You get to go to places that way, too, Marysville, and Mechanicsburg,
and Harrod's--that is, if you're on the local freight, and then you lay
over in Cincinnati. Some ways it's better than firing, and some ways it
isn't so good. And then there is another reason why they don't ask
the brakeman what time it is. He'd say it was "forty-five" or maybe
"fifty-three," and never tell what hour.

"Say! Do you know it's cold? You wouldn't think it would be so cold in
the summer-time."

The maple-trees, from being formless blobs, insensibly begin to look
like lace-work. Presently the heavens and the earth are bathed in liquid
blue that casts a spell so potent on the soul of him that sees it that
he yearns for something he knows not what, except that it is utterly
beyond him, as far beyond him as what he means to be will be from what
he shall attain to. One dreams of romance and renown, of all that should
be and is not. And as he dreams the birds awaken. In the East there
comes a greenish tinge. Far up the track, there is a sullen roar, and
then the hoarse diapason of an engine whistle. The roar strengthens and
strengthens. It is the circus train.

Under the witchcraft of the dreaming blue, each boy had a firm and
stubborn purpose. Over and over again he rehearsed how he would go up
to the man that runs the s