"You'd better get to the crossing if you're making any pretense of real work," suggested Bart just then. As he spoke Bart pointed through the open window across the tracks to the switch shanty at the side of the street crossing. A train was coming. Mr. Lemuel Wacker was "subbing" as extra for the superannuated old cripple whose sole duty was to wave a flag as trains went by. To this duty Wacker sprang with alacrity. Bart dismissed the man from his mind, and, whistling a cheery tune, bent over the book in which he had been writing for the past twenty minutes. This was the register of the local express office of the B. & M., and at present, as Bart had said, he was "running it." The express shed was a one-story, substantial frame building having two rooms. It stood in the center of a network of tracks close to the freight depot and switch tower, and a platform ran its length front and rear. Framed by the window an active railroad panorama spread out, and beyond that view the quaint town of Pleasantville. Bart had spent all his young life here. He knew every nook and corner of the place, and nearly every man, woman and child in the village. Pleasantville did not belie its name to Bart's way of thinking. He voted its people, its surroundings, and life in general there, as pleasant as could well be. Here he was born, and he had found nothing to complain of, although he was what might be called a poor boy. There were his mother, his two sisters and two small brothers at home, and sometimes it took a good deal to go around, but Bart's father had a steady job, and Bart himself was an agreeable, willing boy, just at the threshold of doing something to earn a living and wide-awake for the earliest opportunity. Mr. Stirling had been express agent for the B. & M. for eight years, and was counted a reliable, efficient employee of the company. For some months, however, his health had not been of the best, and Bart had been glad when he was impressed into service to relieve his father when laid up with his occasional foe, the rheumatism, or to watch the office at mealtimes. Bart was on duty in this regard at the present time. It was about five in the afternoon, but it was also the third of July, and that date, like the twenty-fourth of December, was the busiest in the calendar for the little express office. All the afternoon Bart had worked at the desk or helped in getting out packages and boxes for delivery. A little handcart was among the office equipment, and very often Bart did light delivering. On this especial day, however, in addition to the regular freight, Fourth of July and general picnic and celebration goods more than trebled the usual volume, and they had hired a local teamster to assist them.