ask me.

"I've left all my jewelry behind, except my watch," she said,
"and that I hide every night. So I really hope we'll be held up,
it would be such an adventure."

"There isn't any chance of it, Miss Cullen," I told her; "and if
we were, you probably wouldn't even know that it was happening,
but would sleep right through it."

"Wouldn't they try to get our money and our watches?" she
demanded.

I told her no, and explained that the express- and mail-cars were
the only ones to which the road agents paid any attention. She
wanted to know the way it was done: so I described to her how
sometimes the train was flagged by a danger signal, and when it
had slowed down the runner found himself covered by armed men; or
how a gang would board the train, one by one, at way stations,
and then, when the time came, steal forward, secure the express
agent and postal clerk, climb over the tender, and compel the
runner to stop the train at some lonely spot on the road. She
made me tell her all the details of such robberies as I knew
about, and, though I had never been concerned in any, I was able
to describe several, which, as they were monotonously alike, I
confess I colored up a bit here and there, in an attempt to make
them interesting to her. I seemed to succeed, for she kept the
subject going even after we had left the table and were smoking
our cigars in the observation saloon. Lord Ralles had a lot to
say about the American lack of courage in letting trains
containing twenty and thirty men be held up by half a dozen
robbers.

"Why," he ejaculated, "my brother and I each have a double
express with us, and do you think we'd sit still in our seats?
No. Hang me if we wouldn't pot something."

"You might," I laughed, a little nettled, I confess, by his
speech, "but I'm afraid it would be yourselves."

"Aw, you fancy resistance impossible?" drawled Albert Cullen.

"It has been tried," I answered, "and without success. You can
see it's like all surprises. One side is prepared before the
other side knows there is danger. Without regard to relative
numbers, the odds are all in favor of the road agents."

"But I wouldn't sit still, whatever the odds," asserted his
lordship. "And no Englishman would."

"Well, Lord Ralles," I said, "I hope for your sake, then, that
you'll never be in a hold-up, for I should feel about you as the
runner of a locomotive did when the old lady asked him if it
wasn't very painful to him to run