he door. There he paused, blinking fast again:

"Some day I'll show you, Regan, you and all the rest of 'em, and----"

"Get out!" said the little master mechanic peremptorily.

And Sammy Durgan got out. He was always getting out. That was his
forte. When he got in, it was only to get out.

"Some day," said Sammy Durgan--and the Hill Division stuck its tongue
in its cheek. But Sammy Durgan had his answer to the blunt refusal
that invariably greeted his modest request for a fresh job.

"Listen here," said Sammy Durgan, with a firm hold on the overalls'
strap of, it might be, the bridge foreman he was trying to wheedle a
time check out of. "'Twas Regan fired me first, but he was in a bad
humor at the time; 'twas the steam hose I was washing out boiler tubes
with in the roundhouse got away from me, and it was accidental, though
mabbe for the moment it was painful for him. It just shows that if you
get fired once it sticks to you. And as for them baggage checks out to
Moose Peak, they weren't no family, they was a tribe, about eighteen
kids besides the pa and ma, and fourteen baggage cars full of trunks.
_He_ was a little bow-legged fellow with a scared look, and he whispers
where he wants the checks for about three minutes before train time,
then _she_ comes in, bigger'n two elephants, scorches him through a
pair of glasses she carries on a handle, and orders 'em checked
somewhere else. Say, was I to blame if some of them checks in the
hurry didn't get the first name I'd written on 'em scratched out? And
over there to the station the time Regan's office got flooded 'twasn't
my fault. If you get fired once, you keep on getting fired no matter
what you do. I turned the tap off. It was one of them little devils
of call boys turned it on again. But do you think any one would
believe that? They would not--or I'd have mentioned it at the time.
If there's any trouble anywhere and I'm around it's put onto me. And
there's Mrs. Durgan back there to Big Cloud. She ain't very well.
Cough's troubling her more'n usual lately, and worrying about the rent
not being paid ain't helping her any. Say, you'll give me a job, won't
you?"

Sammy Durgan got the job.

Now, as may be inferred, Sammy Durgan did not always adhere strictly to
the truth--not that he swerved from it with vicious intent, but that,
like some other things, trouble for instance, the swerving had grown,
as it were, to be a habit. Mrs. Durgan did not h