allast away for two days and a
half, until, as it got dark on that particular day, barely a week after
Owsley had come to the work, they listened, by way of variation, to the
chime whistle of an engine that came ringing down with the wind.

McCann and Owsley shared a little shanty by themselves, and McCann was
trying to initiate Owsley into the mysteries of that grand old game so
dear to the hearts of Irishmen--the game of forty-five. But at the
first sound of the whistle, the cards dropped from Owsley's hands, and
he jumped to his feet.

"D'ye hear that! D'ye hear that!" he cried.

"An' fwhat av ut?" inquired McCann. "Ut'll be the material we'd be
hung up for, if 'twere not for the storm."

Owsley leaned across the table, his head turned a little sideways in a
curious listening attitude--leaned across the table and gripped
McCann's shoulders.

"It's the 1601!" he whispered. He put his finger to his lips to
caution silence, and with the other hand patted McCann's shoulder
confidentially. "It's the 1601!" he whispered--and jumped for the
door--out into the storm.

"For the love av Mike!" gasped McCann, staggering to his feet as the
lamp flared up and out with the draft. "Now, fwhat the divil--from
this, an' the misfortunate way he picks up forty-foive, mabbe, mabbe I
was wrong, an' mabbe ut's queer after all, he is, an'----" McCann was
still muttering to himself as he stumbled to the door.

There was no sign of Owsley--only a string of boxes and flats, backed
down, and rattling and bumping to a halt on the temporary track a
hundred yards away--then the joggling light of a trainman running
through the murk and, evidently, hopping the engine pilot, for the
light disappeared suddenly and McCann heard the locomotive moving off
again.

McCann couldn't see the main line, or the little station they had
erected there since the work began for the purpose of operating the
construction trains, but he knew well enough what was going on. Off
the main line, in lieu of a turntable and to facilitate matters
generally, they had built a Y into the construction camp; and the work
train, in from the East, had dropped its caboose on the main line
between the arms of the Y, gone ahead, backed the flats and boxes down
the west-end arm of the Y into the camp, left them there in front of
him, and the engine, shooting off on the main line again, via the
east-end arm of the Y, would be heading east, and had only to back up
the m