here!" he said between his teeth.

"Carleton," cried Flannagan again, and his arms went out in
supplication toward the super, "Carleton, give me back my job--give it
back to me for to-night--just for to-night."

"No!" the single word came from Carleton's lips like a thunder clap.

Flannagan shivered a little and shrank back.

"Just for to-night," he mumbled hoarsely. "Just for----"

"No!" Carleton's voice rang hard as flint. "I tell you, no! Get out
of here!"

Harvey moved suddenly, threateningly, toward Flannagan--and, as
suddenly, Flannagan, roused by the act, brushed the division engineer
aside like a plaything, sprang forward, and, with a quick, fierce grip,
caught Carleton's arms and pinioned them, vise-like, to his sides.

"And I tell you, yes!" his voice rose dominant with the power, the will
that shook him now to the depths of his turbulent soul. As a man who
knows no law, no obstacle, no restraint, as a man who would batter down
the gates of hell itself to gain his end, so then was Flannagan. "I
tell you, yes! I tell you, yes! _My wife and baby's in that wreck
to-night?_"

Turmoil, shouts, the short, quick intermittent hiss of steam as the
1014, her cylinder cocks open, backed down to the platform, the clash
of coupling cars, a jumbled medley of sounds, floated up from the yard
without--but within the little room, the chattering sounder for the
moment stilled, there fell a silence as of death, and no man among them
moved or spoke.

Flannagan, gray-faced, gasping, his mighty grip still on Carleton, his
head thrown forward close to the other's, stared into the super's
face--and, for a long minute, in the twitching muscles of the big
wrecker's face, in the look that man reads seldom in his fellows' eyes,
Carleton drew the fearful picture, lived the awful story that the
babbling wire had told. "Royal" Carleton, square man and big of heart,
his voice broke.

"God help you, Flannagan--go."

No word came from Flannagan's lips--only a queer choking sound, as his
hands dropped to his sides--only a queer choking sound, as he turned
suddenly and jumped for the door.

On the stairs, Dorsay, the driver of the 1014, coming up for his
orders, passed Flannagan.

"Bad spill, I hear," growled the engineer, as he went by. "The five
hundred and five's pony truck jumped the rails on the lower curve and
everything's in the ditch. Old Burke's gone out and a heap of the
passengers with him. I----"

Flanna