“A friend of yours, did you say, Mr. Billings?” asked the colonel, doubtfully.
“Of course he is, and, what is more, a fellow-reporter. Why, he is out here doing the strike for the Phono.”
“Well, Mr. Manning,” said the colonel, heartily, and extending his hand, “I sincerely beg your pardon for mistaking you for a striker—and a mischievous one at that—and treating you accordingly. But why in the name of common-sense didn’t you disclose your identity at once?”
“Partly because you didn’t give me a chance, sir, and partly because I felt hurt—”
“Felt hurt!” interrupted Billings, to whom the conversation seemed to be taking altogether too serious a tone. “Well, your feelings must correspond with your looks then. For a more torn, tattered, battered, mud-bespattered, blood-stained, and generally seedy-looking individual than you are at this moment I never saw.”
“Then you consider me excusable for mistaking Mr. Manning for a striker?” asked the colonel, with a smile.
“Excusable, colonel? Certainly I do! You would be excusable for mistaking him for any thing, from a relation to a politician,” answered Billings, laughing. “But, look here, Manning, you haven’t told us a word yet of how you happened to be a total wreck out here in the woods. I heard something about a car off the track and a striker found under it, but I was eating a sort of a make-believe ham-sandwich breakfast just then. We have stopped so often for wrecked cars and missing rails that I didn’t consider it worth while to let up on the Sam Handwich just to look after it. Thus I only just this moment found time to come and spy out the villain, and, behold, you are he.”
“Your mention of missing rails,” said Myles, “reminds me that two are gone from the track just about where we now are. I passed over the place not half an hour ago.”
“Then excuse me for a moment,” said the colonel, while I go and order a sharp lookout.”
As he left the car the locomotive uttered its warning call for brakes. In another minute the train was at a stand-still, and several men were stripping off their clothing preparatory to diving in the stream alongside the track to search for the missing rails.