full two inches to unscrew! Besides this, the whole thing was well
rusted with years of exposure. Yet the impossible had happened!

He stood gazing at the bolt with a sort of uncanny feeling stirring
within him. The engine at the head of its long string of box cars
approached. It passed him, and he heard its driver hurl some
uncomplimentary remark at him as the rattling old kettle clanked by.
Then, as the last car passed him, and rapidly grew smaller as the
distance swallowed it up, he turned back to his vegetable patch with
the mystery still unsolved.

* * * * *

The journey through the hills was nearly over, and White Point was but
a short distance ahead. The conductor and crew of the local freight
were lounging comfortably in the caboose.

The brakeman's life is full of risk and little comfort, and such
moments as these were all too few. When they came they were more than
gratefully received. Now the men were spread out in various attitudes
of repose, and, for the most part, were half asleep.

Suddenly, without the least warning, they were startled into full
wakefulness by the familiar clatter, beginning at the head of the
train and passing rapidly down its full length, as the cars closed up
on each other. The resting men knew that the locomotive was either
stopping, or had already come to a halt.

The conductor, or head brakeman, sat up with a jolt.

"Hey, you, Jack!" he cried peevishly. "Get up aloft an' get a peek
out. Say, we sure ain't goin' to get held up at a bum flag layout."

His contempt was no less for the flag station than Mr. Moss's for a
local freight.

The man addressed as "Jack" sprang alertly to the roof of the caboose.
A moment later his voice echoed through the car below him.

"Can't see a thing," he cried. "We're on the last bend, just outside
White Point. She's stopped--dead sure. Guess the flag has got us held
up." With a few added curses he clambered down into the car again.

* * * * *

As the brakeman left the roof of the caboose the enactment of a
strange scene began at the fore part of the car immediately in front
of it.

A glance down at the coupling would have revealed the cautious
appearance of a shock of rough hair covering a man's head from under
the last box car. Slowly it twisted round till a grimy, dust-covered
face was turned upward, and a pair of expectant eyes peered up at the
tops of the two cars.

Ap