“‘All right,’ said I; ‘I’m going to Shelby’s vaudeville.’
“That surprised him. But he didn’t say anything more. You remember old Shelby’s show there. I always used to go when I was in Buffalo of an evening.
“But about 11:30, when the show was over, Charlie began to get nervous again. ‘Well, Hen,’ he said, ‘where next?’
“‘I don’t know about you,’ said I, ‘but I’m going to stroll out to Chaplin’s yard before I turn in, and take a look at our cars. You’d better go to bed.’
“‘Not a bit of it,’ he broke out. ‘I’m going with you.’
“‘All right,’ said I, ‘come along. It’s a fine night.’
“Well, gentlemen, when we got out to the yards, there were our cars in two long lines on parallel tracks, seventy on one track and fifty on another—one thing bothered me, they were broken in four places at street crossings—and on the two next tracks beside them were Charlie’s two engines, steam up and headlights lighted. And, say, you never saw anything quite like it! The boys they’d sent with the engines weren’t anybody’s fools, and they had on about three hundred pounds of steam apiece—blowing off there with a noise you could hear for a mile, but the boys themselves weren’t saying a word; they were sitting around smoking their pipes, quiet as seven Sabbaths.
“When Charlie saw this laid out right before his eyes, he took frightened all of a sudden—his knees were going like that. He grabbed my arm and pulled me back into the shadow.
“‘Hen, for heaven’s sake, let’s get out of here quick. This means the penitentiary.’
“‘You can go,’ said I. ‘I didn’t invite you to the party.’