"It would have been such a good shansh to shave my life's wife--I mean my--I don't know what I mean." He sank into a chair and ordered a drink; then suddenly remembered his vow, and with great heroism, rescinded the order. Mallory, finding that the train was checked just before he reached the conductor, saw that official's bewildered wrath at the stoppage and had a fearsome intuition that Marjorie had somehow done the deed. He hurried back to the observation room, where he found her charging up and down, still distraught. He paused at a safe distance and said: "The train has stopped, my dear. Somebody rang the bell." "I guess somebody did!" Marjorie answered, with a proud toss of the head. "Where's the conductor?" "He's looking for the fellow that pulled the rope." "You go tell him to back up--and slowly, too." "No, thank you!" said Mallory. He was a brave young man, but he was not bearding the conductors of stopped expresses. Already the conductor's voice was heard in the smoking room, where he appeared with the rush and roar of a Bashan bull. "Well!" he bellowed, "which one of you guys pulled that rope?" "It was nobody here, sir," Dr. Temple meekly explained. The conductor transfixed him with a baleful glare: "I wouldn't believe a gambler on oath. I bet you did it." "I assure you, sir," Wedgewood interposed, "he didn't touch it. I was heah." The conductor waved him aside and charged into the observation room, followed by all the passengers in an awe struck rabble. Here, too, the conductor thundered: "Who pulled that rope? Speak up somebody." Mallory was about to sacrifice himself to save Marjorie, but she met the conductor's black rage with the withering contempt of a young queen: "I pulled the old rope. Whom did you suppose?" The conductor almost dropped with apoplexy at finding himself with nobody to vent his immense rage on, but this pink and white slip. "You!" he gulped, "well, what in----Say, in the name of--why, don't you know it's a penitentiary offense to stop a train this way?" Marjorie tossed her head a little higher, grew a little calmer: "What do I care? I want you to back up." The conductor was reduced to a wet rag, a feeble echo: "Back up--the train up?" "Yes, back the train up," Marjorie answered, resolutely, "and go slowly till I tell you to stop." The conductor stared at her a moment, then whirled on Mallory: "Say, what in hell's the matter with your wife?" Mallory was saved from the problem of answering by Marjorie's abrupt change from a young Tsarina rebuking a serf, to a terrified mother. She flung out imploring palms and with a gush of tears pleaded: "Won't you please back up? My darling child fell off the train." The conductor's rage fell away in an instant. "Your child fell off the train!" he gasped. "Good Lord! How old was he?" With one hand he was groping for the bell cord to give the signal, with the other he opened the door to look back along the track. "He was two years old," Marjorie sobbed.