He went to Farrelton Junction that morning and paid his fine, and on the way back he drove a frightened cat up a tree and climbed up after it. It may be observed in passing that he was the sworn enemy of cats. To get one at bay and poke his stick at it and observe its thickened tail and mountainous back was his idea of high adventure. The frantic hissing was like music to his ears. He might have had the stalker’s badge, the pathfinder’s badge, and half a dozen other badges for the mileage and ingenuity wasted on cats. On that very day he made a discovery which was to keep him right side up for several days. During that time Farrelton and his home saw but little of him. It was the calm preceding the storm. He discovered along the railroad tracks near Clover Valley, a crew of workers engaged in lengthening a siding. They had been brought from distant parts and made their home in a freight car which was converted into a rolling camp. It had a kitchen with an old-fashioned stove in it and pots and pans hanging all about. Partitioned off from this was a compartment with delightfully primitive bunks. The workers hung out their washing on the roof of the car. Best of all there was a little handcar at their disposal, which was worked by pumping a handle up and down. By this means they could move back and forth from the village of Clover Valley, about two miles up the line. Between two o’clock and five-nineteen each day, this little car was safe on the line and they used it to get provisions from the village. Hervey loved this handcar as no mortal ever before loved an inanimate thing. To propel it by its creaky pump handle was a delight. And the old freight car in which those half-dozen men fried bacon and played cards approximated nearer than anything he had ever seen to his idea of heaven. [Illustration: IT WAS HERVEY’S DELIGHT TO HELP PROPEL THE LITTLE HANDCAR.] These rough, burly men accepted him as they would have accepted a stray dog and called him a mascot. He hiked to their camp each day and stayed among them till sunset. He wandered about and climbed trees and ate with them and fetched saw or sledge-hammer, and was always on the handcar when it went down the line to Clover Valley for provisions. When he told the men his name was Hervey, they dubbed him Nervy and he was fated to deserve the name. Of course, they liked him. He was serviceable when he wanted to be and it was all right when he elected to beguile himself in the dense woods that bordered the tracks.