"Did you find my two thinieth I picked up on the track yesterday?" asked Dicky. "Ethels made me throw away all the thingth in my pocket and my thinieth went too."
"What does he mean by his 'shinies'?" asked Mr. Emerson.
"He picked up a lot of stuff yesterday when we were hunting arrow heads and walking to Rosemont by the short cut over the track. When I was putting Mrs. Schuler's storm cape on him I emptied out his pocketful of trash into the fireplace."
"What did the shinies look like, son?" inquired Dicky's grandfather.
Dicky was entering into an elaborate and unintelligible explanation when Moya took the bits of brass from the gourd.
"Would these be the shinies?" she asked.
Mr. Emerson took them from her and examined them carefully.
"I rather think the explanation of the explosion is here," he decided. "You say you picked these up on the track, Dicky?"
"Yeth, I did, and Ethel threw them away," repeated the youngster who was beginning to think that he had a real grievance, since his "shinies" seemed to have some importance.
"These are two of the small dynamite cartridges that brakemen lay on the track to notify the engineer of a following train to stop for some reason. They use them in stormy weather or when there is reason to think that the usual flag or red light between the rails won't be seen."