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about how the train had chased a man along the track; how the engineer had shouted, "Get off!" and the farmer had yelled, "If I get off into the ploughed ground, you fellers will ketch me an' run over me!" All the men about the teller roared as if it actually had happened.

After about an hour of these felicitations, the foremen persuaded the men to go to work. Abner got out his team and hitched it to his scoop, but his work was so overshadowed by the fact of the engine actually standing there on the track, he could hardly think of what he was doing.

Lane County really had a railroad! How "smart" Railroad Jones was to build one! He recalled the suit about the heating stoves which Railroad had won in Lanesburg. A brainy man! A big-hearted man to back up the train and let him and Tug ride!

Out in front of Abner a small army of men was working on the right of way, levelling it, cutting away the hills, filling the valleys. The L. C. F. & L. Ry. was stretching westward into virgin country. The August sun climbed the heavens and looked down on this activity. It grew hot. Abner's mules danced with fretfulness; the youth jerked their reins and cursed. He went round and round in the heat, falling into the peculiar coma of labour.

A little before noon, Tug came to Abner and told him if he would take out his mules right away they could catch the train back to Irontown and see Zed off on the twelve o'clock.

Abner started at once for the stables. The foreman came up and wanted to know why Abner was quitting work at that hour. Abner told the foreman that all he, the foreman, had to do was to mark down his, Abner's, time, and if he didn't like what he was doing he could "chubb" it. Thereupon Abner and Tug hurried to catch the cars for the return trip.

On the way back Abner rode on the last flat and watched the landscape spin back to Irontown. And as he rattled along it occurred to him that each day his work would be getting farther and farther away from Irontown, and eventu-