“How’s that?”
“Ye see that wee gurrul sittin’ there?”
He pointed to a Swedish girl who looked as if she had been crying very recently.
“Well, be me sowl, it’s no loi, but a mon kem aboard awhile ago, and while the craythur was asleep he stole her beyootiful yellow hair wid a pair of shayers, be gob!”
“It seems to have frightened you?”
“Thrue for you. I saw a man on the platform above wid only wan leg, an’ bedad it wouldn’t surprise me if he tried to shtale one av moine.”
I jumped off, laughing at the fellow’s downright uneasiness, and in a few moments the train drew out from the sheds.
CHAPTER XXV.
THE WRECKING TRAIN.
In the morning, as I have watched the conductors, engineers, and trainmen trooping down to the Union station, and marked one of them, a fine, hearty, lusty, fellow, I have wondered if he would ever come back. A collision, a pitch-in, a broken rail, or a low bridge are possibilities always before them. I was in the Union station one afternoon when a wrecking train came in from the east, bringing the crew and portable parts of a train which had been wrecked by a pitch-in away down the line. Four of the train-hands, including the engineer, had been hurt, some of them seriously, and to see the fine young fellows, all broken and hurt, lifted out of the car to be sent to the hospital, was most sad. On the platform stood an old woman, who, on seeing her boy borne out, broke into bitter weeping.