"Shut her off, Jo. We've done the act so far all right," said Rob, speaking jerkily and with ill-repressed excitement. "Now comes the real danger. What a crowd there is about the station. There's an engine, though, with a single car attached. See! Waiting up by the tank. Perhaps our bluff has worked! Steady! Here they come!"
The stolen locomotive had come to a stop at the lower end of the station platform, panting as though exhausted by its long run, and a group of Chinese officials were hurrying to meet it.
"Where is his excellency, Yu-Hsien?" asked one of these, peering with an expectant air into the cab.
"He is following on a special train," replied Jo, promptly; "but I am his representative, sent ahead to prepare the way for him. Is the track-repairing car ready, as the governor requested? If not he will cause the officials of Pao-Ting to suffer the same 'bitterness' that has gained him fame among the foreigners of Shan-Si."
"It has been prepared according to the most noble governor's desire," replied the official, hesitatingly, "but—"
"Let us, then, go to it," interrupted Jo, stepping from the locomotive as he spoke and starting up the platform.
Rob followed him closely. As he left the cab he caught a glimpse of a begrimed, dishevelled, and nearly naked man crawling from beneath the tender. In an instant it flashed across him that this was their lost engine-driver. Looking back a moment later he saw the same figure following them.
They in the mean time were being conducted towards the agent's quarters in the station-house, where refreshments had been prepared for Governor Yu-Hsien.
"If he were but here," remarked the official spokesman, deprecatingly, "of course, everything would be at his disposal; but we have been so expressly ordered not to allow the passage north of any save troops or mandarins of the highest rank, that we are at a loss how to act."