During my college vacation, I constantly lounged about the station, making friends with the officials, and especially with an engineer named Silas Markley. I became much attached to this man, although he was forty years of age and by no means a sociable fellow.
He was my ideal of a brave, skillful, thoroughbred engineer, and I looked up to him as something of a hero. He was not a married man, but lived alone with his old mother. I was a frequent visitor at their house, and I think they both took quite a fancy to me in their quiet, undemonstrative way.
When this Markley's fireman left him, I induced him to let me take his place during the remainder of my vacation. He hesitated for some time before he consented to humor my boyish whim; but he finally yielded, and I was in great glee.
The fact was that, in my idleness and the overworked state of my brain, I craved for the excitement, and, besides, I had such longing dreams of the fiery ride through the hills, mounted literally on the iron horse. So I became an expert fireman, and liked it exceedingly; for the excitement more than compensated for the rough work I was required to do.
But there came a time when I got my fill of excitement. Mrs. Markley one day formed a plan which seemed to give her a good deal of happiness. It was her son's birthday, and she wanted to go down to Philadelphia in the train without letting him know anything about it, and there purchase a present for him. She took me into her confidence, and asked me to assist her. I arranged the preliminaries, got her into the train without being noticed by Markley, who, of course, was busy with his engine.
The old lady was in high glee over the bit of innocent deception she was practicing on her son. She enjoined me again not to tell Silas, and then I left her and took my place.
It was a midsummer day, and the weather was delightful.
The train was one which stopped at the principal stations on the route. On this occasion, as there were two specials on the line, it was run by telegraph—that is, the engineer has simply to obey the instructions which he receives at each station, so that he is put as a machine in the hands of one controller, who directs all trains from a central point, and thus has the whole line under his eye. If the engineer does not obey to the least tittle his orders, it is destruction to the whole.
Well, we started without mishap, and up to time, and easily reached the first station in the time allotted to us. As we stopped there, a boy ran alongside with the telegram, which he handed to the engineer. The next moment I heard a smothered exclamation from Markley.
"Go back," he said to the boy; "tell Williams to have the message repeated; there's a mistake."