Ford's prophecies predicting the development of the new empire first traversed by the Western Extension have long since found ample fulfilment, as all the world knows. Copah gave the region its first and largest advertisement; but other mining districts, with their imperative beckonings to a food-producing population, have followed in due course. It was early in June of the year marking the opening of the completed Western Extension for through Pacific Coast traffic that a one-car train, drawn by the smartest of passenger engines in charge of a diminutive, red-headed Irishman, stormed bravely up the glistening steel on the eastern approach to Plug Pass. The car was the rebuilt Nadia; and in obedience to a shrill blast of the cab air-whistle, Gallagher brought it to a stand on the summit of the mountain. Alicia looked more than ever the artist's ideal of the American womanly felicities when Ford lifted her from the step of the Nadia. "You are quite sure Mr. Gallagher won't mind?" she was saying, as they walked forward together. "Mind? Wait till you hear what he says. Michael is an Irish diamond in the rough, and he knows when he is honored." They discovered the red-headed little man industriously "oiling around" for the swift glide down the western declivities. "Michael," said the first vice-president, "Mrs. Ford thinks she would like to take the Pannikin loop in the cab of the Six-eighty-eight. Can you make room for us?" Gallagher snatched his cap from his fiery head. "Could we make room? 'Tis by the blessing av the saints that I'm a little man, meself, Missis Foord, and don't take up much room in the c-yab. And as f'r Johnny Shovel, he'll be riding on the coal f'r the pure playsure av ut. My duty to ye, ma'am; and 'tis a pity ut isn't a black night, whin the swate face av ye would be lighting the thrack f'r us." Ford lifted Alicia to the gangway and made her comfortable on the fireman's box, fixing a footbrace for her, and giving her his arm for a shoulder rest when Gallagher sent the steam whistling through the cylinder-cocks for the impulse needful to start the downward rush. "'With a michnai--ghignai--'" she began; but when the engine plunged over the summit and the matchless view to the westward came suddenly into, being, the quotation lapsed in a long-drawn, ecstatic "O-o-oh!" "You are not afraid, are you?" said the bridegroom, man-like, letting her feel the support of his arm. "Afraid? No, indeed; I am just happy--happy! There lies the world before us, Stuart; _our_ world, because, more than any other man's, yours were the brain that conceived it and the hands that brought it to pass. Let us go down quickly and possess it. Tell Mr. Gallagher that he may run as fast as ever he dares." Then with a sigh of contentment and a comfortable nestling into the hollow of the strong arm of protection: "Was there ever another wedding journey just like ours, Stuart, dear?"