of
those strange meeting points fixed by the Great Despatcher that we were
speaking about a minute ago.

It was three months to the day from old John MacQuigan's death that
Bradley, in from a run, found a letter waiting for him up at Mrs.
MacQuigan's--and went down under it like a felled ox! Not the big
thing to do? Well, perhaps not--all that he cared for in life,
everything that he lived for, everything that had kept him straight
since his trouble years ago, snatched from him without a moment's
warning--that was all. Another man might not have lost his grip--or he
might. Bradley lost his--for a little while--but they call him to-day
a game man on the Hill Division.

White-faced, not quite understanding himself, in a queer sort of
groping way, Bradley, in his flood of bitter misery, told Mrs.
MacQuigan, who had watched him open the letter--told her that his
little housekeeper, as he had come to call the kiddie, was dead. Not
even a chance to see her--an accident--the letter from the lawyers who
did his business, transmitting the news received from the school
authorities who knew only the lawyers as the principals--a letter,
trying to break the news in a softer way than a telegram would have
done, since Bradley was too far away to get back East in time, anyhow.

And Mrs. MacQuigan put her arms around him, and, understanding as only
her mother's heart could understand, tried to comfort him, while the
tears rained down the sweet old face. But Bradley's eyes were dry.
With his elbows on the table, holding his chin in his hands, his face
like stone, he stared at the letter he had spread out on the red
checkered cloth--stared for a long time at that, and at the little
photograph he had taken from his pocket.

"Martin, boy," pleaded Mrs. MacQuigan, and her hand brushed back the
hair from his forehead, "Martin, boy, don't take it like that."

And then Bradley turned and looked at her--not a word--only a bitter
laugh--and picked up his letter and the picture and went out.

Bradley went up on the 582 with the local freight, west, that night,
and there was a dare-devil laugh in his heart and a mechanical sense of
existence in his soul. And in the cab that night, deep in the
mountains, Bradley lost his grip. It seemed to sweep him in a sudden,
overwhelming surge; and, with the door swung wide, the cab leaping into
fiery red, the sweat beads trickling down his face that was white in a
curious way where the skin showe