Muckle Alick was arranging the parcels—which were to go, and which to be delivered on the morrow. He laid them neatly on long high benches at opposite sides of the room, with the larger ones below on the floor. There was no work of Muckle Alick's doing which was not perfectly done, and as featly and daintily as a girl twitches her crochet needles among the cotton. So engrossed was Alick in this work that it was five minutes past ten before he looked up at the clock—a cheap one which he had bought from a Jew pedlar, and fixed upon the wall himself—"to see the time to go home by," his mates said. The clock told him it was time to go home already. He started up and rushed out. The London express was due from the Irish Boat! It passed Netherby without stopping, running on to the other line for thirty miles, which from the Junction was a single one. Duncan Urquhart's heavily-laden goods ought already to have passed. It was James Cannon's duty to keep back the express till he could turn the goods on to a siding, so that the rails might be kept clear for the passage of the express five minutes later. Muckle Alick started up in instant affright. He had not heard Duncan Urquhart's heavy train go rumbling by. ADVENTURE XLVIII. MUCKLE ALICK SEES THE DISTANT SIGNAL STAND AT CLEAR. Alick rushed out without waiting to put on his cap. He glanced up at the signal box. It seemed dim and dusky. "James Cannon has let his lamp go low!" muttered Alick to himself. At that moment he heard first one warning whistle, and then two. He was not quite sure about the last, for the wind was shrieking its loudest, and it was not easy to be certain about anything. He looked up and down the line, shading his eyes from the rain with his hand. Great God of heaven! The goods train was not yet off the single line. Both signals were standing at clear, and the points were not shifted. The Boat express was thundering down the hill from Port Andrew at the rate of sixty miles an hour, and would be through the Junction in a minute. And there upon the single metals right ahead would be Duncan Urquhart with his heavy goods train. Muckle Alick snatched up a huge bar of metal, which was used in forcing round the cranks when they reversed the engines on the turn-table by the engine house, the same which little Hugh had almost spent his life in trying to observe more nearly. With this ponderous tool in his hand Muckle Alick rushed along to the facing points, whence Duncan Urquhart's goods train might possibly be guided upon the proper metals ere the express rushed past. As he ran he saw Duncan's headlights coming, and the thunder of the express was also in his ears. He shouted with all his power, but the wind whirled away Muckle Alick's cries as though they had been baby Gavin's.