Patrick felt hurt and grieved, and, more in sorrow than in anger, he got the oriental grand bounce, and had to rustle for another job. This time he tried to secure the position of master mechanic; but when the road to which he applied found out that he didn't know the difference between the cow-catcher and the automatic air brake, Patrick was appointed as assistant polisher and wiper extraordinary at the roundhouse.
All this time he never drank a drop or uttered a profane word. No matter how much he was imposed upon, he never got mad or quarreled with the other men. He sometimes felt sorely tried, but he saw that other railroad men did not swear, so he did not.
After nine years of mental strain in the round-house, he was put on the road as a fireman on 259; he was now, after sixteen years' hard study and perseverance, on the road to promotion.
Just as soon as he could find a child on the track, some day, and snatch the innocent little thing from the jaws of death, he felt that he would be solid. Sometimes he would allow his mind to dwell on this subject so long that his fire would go out and the engineer would report him, and the old man would lay him off to give him a chance to think it over.
Three years Patrick fired on 259, and there wasn't a child that got within 1,300 feet of the track when his engine came by. They seemed to know that Patrick was perishing to save a child from being flattened out by the train.
He began to get discouraged. He said he would try it another year, and if he failed he would have to give up railroading and go to Congress.
One day he had just fired up the 259 in good shape and looked out of the window ahead, when he saw a little child toddling along toward them and only a few yards away, while the engine shrieked like a demon, and the little chubby baby came on toward the rushing monster, whose hot breath, with short, sharp hisses, rushed through the June morning.
Patrick felt that the joy or sorrow of a whole lifetime was in store for him. It was not only life or death to the joyous parents, but it was the culmination of the hopes and fears, the agony, the self-denial and disappointments of his whole life, and the opening up of a new future to him, or it was another lost opportunity and the continuation of along, dreary, uneventful journey to the grave.
He was out on the pilot in an instant. He did not breathe. The rushing engine trembled beneath him, and like a flash the still laughing child was in his strong-arms.
He had triumphed. The goal was reached. The great struggle was over, and in a few days he would be president of the road. He got home, and a man came toward him with a document of some kind. His breath came short and hard. It was probably his credentials as president of the road. He took it and read it over in a sort of dream. It was only a notice that his board bill had been garnisheed, and the superintendent told him that he must pay it or the company would have to squeeze along without his services.