"I turned to the trustees and asked what they would consider as fulfilling the requirements of the will.
"'Any honorable employment,' answered the oldest man of the trio.
"The next day, I went to see Andy Bridges, general superintendent of the old home road, who had been a friend of father's, and told him I wanted to go railroading. He offered to put me in his office, but I insisted on the foot-board, and to make a long story short, was firing inside of three weeks and running inside of three years.
"I was the proudest young prig that ever pulled a throttle. I always loved the work and—well, you know how the first five years of it absorbs you if you are cut out for it and like it and intend to stay at it.
"I had been running about two years, and had paid about as much attention to young women as I had to the subject of astronomy, until Madelene Bridges came out of a Southern convent to make her home with her uncle, our 'old man.'
"The first time I saw her I went clean, stark, raving, blind, drunken daft over her. I tried to argue and reason myself out of it, but it was no go. I didn't even know who she was then.
"But I was in love and, being so, wasn't hardly safe on the road.
"Then I spruced up and started in to see if I couldn't interest her in me half as much as I was interested in her.
"I didn't have much trouble to get a start, for Andy Bridges had come up from the ranks and hadn't forgotten it—most of 'em do—and welcomed any decent young man in his house, even if he was a car hand. Madelene had a couple of marriageable cousins then and that may account for old Andy.