r anxious ears by the howling
wind, she heard two long and two short blasts of the flyer's whistle as
she signalled for a crossing. God! would she ever get there. Straining
every nerve, at last success was hers, and tottering, she struggled up
the other side. Flying up the track, looking for all the world like some
eyrie witch, she reached the curve, swinging her red light like mad. Bob
Burns, who was pulling the flyer that night, saw the signal, and
immediately applied the emergency brakes. Then he looked again and the
red-light was gone. But caution is a magic watchword with all railroad
men, and he stopped. Climbing down out of the cab of the engine, he took
his torch, and started out to investigate. He didn't have far to go,
when he came upon the limp, inanimate form of Mary Marsh, the
extinguished red-light tightly clasped in her cold little hand.

"My God! Mike," he yelled to his fireman, "it's a woman. Why, hang me,
if it isn't the little lady from Dunraven. Wonder what she is doing out
here." He wasn't long in ignorance, because a brakeman sent out ahead
saw that the bridge had gone.

Rough, but kindly hands, bore her tenderly into the sleeper, and under
the ministrations of her own sex, she soon came around. So soon as she
had seen the flyer stopping she realized that she had succeeded and
womanlike--she fainted. Her clothes were torn to tatters, and taken all
in all this little heroine was a most woebegone specimen of humanity.

A wrecking office was cut in by the baggageman, who happened to be an
old lineman, and she sent the message to "DS," telling him of the wreck.
I relieved her and she stayed in the sleeper all night, and the next day
she returned to her work at Dunraven, but little worse for the
experience. She had positively refused to accept a thing from the
thankful passengers, saying she did but her duty.

Two months afterwards she married the chief despatcher, and the
profession lost the best woman operator in the business. I was
dreadfully cut by the ending of affairs, but she had said, "Red headed
operators were not in her class," and I reckon she was about right.

Surely, she was a direct descendant from the Spartan mothers.

CHAPTER V

A NIGHT OFFICE IN TEXAS--A STUTTERING DESPATCHER

It was not long after Mary threw me over that I became tired of X---- and
gave up my job and started south. I said it was on account of ill
health, but the last thing that cussed first trick despat