“But, if everybody works and succeeds, we’ll all be at the front, Jack, old boy. My notion is that a great deal depends upon individual effort.”
But Jack would not be comforted. He gave so much time and thought to his brother brakemen that he neglected his own job. He would forget his flags, and one night went out on the Midnight Express with no oil in his lamps. He had been reported by the conductor, but the trainmaster, knowing the sad history of his family, let him off with a sharp lecture. But a man in train service must have his mind on his work, and so it fell out that the pale, thoughtful Jack forgot to close the switch at Greenville one night, and put a fast freight, that was following the express, in the ditch.
For that inexcusable carelessness he was discharged, and it was not until Tommy had almost exhausted his influence at the general office that he was re-employed as flagman on a work-train.
Mary, Jack’s sister, had written Tommy from the convent at St. Louis, urging him to help her unfortunate brother, who seemed to be in bad repute with the officials, who apparently had forgotten that poor Jack “had risked his life” to save the Midnight Express from train robbers when a mere boy.
Tommy, remembering the sad face of the girl who had been the one close friend of his brief childhood, did what he could for her brother, but he would have done that without the letter.
Out of his savings Tommy had helped his father to build a new house at Silver Creek, and when he saw the old folks comfortably settled in it, he was contented, or as nearly so as an ambitious, aspiring youth looking for promotion can be.
Alas, for the uncertainty of railroading! Eternal vigilance, it may be said, is the price of a job. A man must so live and work, that when he leaves one road another will be waiting for him.
The Vandalia elected a new President. A new General Manager was appointed and a general cleaning out followed.
The Passenger Agent, who had taken so much interest in Tommy, retired for a time, and Tommy determined to go West and grow up with the railroads of that region.
He made a long visit at St. Jacobs, and found that his little sweetheart was dead to the world. She had taken the veil, and so shut herself away from the world that had ever seemed hard and heartless to her.