HIRTY SECONDS OF TWELVE
XXIX. BROUGHT TO TIME
XXX. "STILL HIGHER!"

* * * * *

BART STIRLING'S ROAD TO SUCCESS

CHAPTER I

THE THIRD OF JULY

"You can't go in that room."

"Why can't I?"

"Because that's the orders; and you can't smoke in this room."

Bart Stirling spoke in a definite, manly fashion.

Lemuel Wacker dropped his hand from the door knob on which it rested,
and put his pipe in his pocket, but his shoulders hunched up and his
unpleasant face began to scowl.

"Ho!" he snorted derisively, "official of the company, eh? Running
things, eh?"

"I am--for the time being," retorted Bart, cheerfully.

"Well," said Wacker, with an ugly sidelong look, "I don't take
insolence from anyone with the big head. I reckon ten year's service
with the B. & M. entitles a man to know his rights."

"Very active service just now, Mr. Wacker?" insinuated Bart pleasantly.

Lem Wacker flushed and winced, for the pointed question struck home.

"I don't want no mistering!" he growled. "Lem's good enough for me. And
I don't take no call-down from any stuck-up kid, I want you to
understand that."

"You'd better get to the crossing if you're making any pretense of real
work," suggested Bart just then.

As he spoke Bart pointed through the open window across the tracks to
the switch shanty at the side of the street crossing.

A train was coming. Mr. Lemuel Wacker was "subbing" as extra for the
superannuated old cripple whose sole duty was to wave a flag as trains
went by. To this duty Wacker sprang with alacrity.

Bart dismissed the man from his mind, and, whistling a cheery tune, bent
over the book in which he had been writing for the past twenty minutes.

This was the register of the local express office of the B. & M., and
at present, as Bart had said, he was "running it."

The express shed was a one-story, substantial frame building having two
rooms. It stood in the center of a network of tracks close to the
freight depot and switch tower, and a platform ran its length front and
rear.

Framed by the window an active railroad panorama spread out, and beyond
that view the quaint town of Pleasantville.

Bart had spent all his young life here. He knew every nook and corner of
the place, and nearly every man, woman and child in the village.

Pleasantville did not belie its name to Bart's way of thinking. He voted
its people, its surroundings, and life in gen