Most of the men were in a state of social inebriety. A few fighters were sitting apart on their dunnage-bags, nursing bruises and grudges. Mindful of the State law that forbade the wearing of calked boots on board a railroad train, the men who owned only that sort of footgear were in their stocking feet. They carried their boots strung about their necks by lacings. Many were bareheaded, having thrown away their hats in their enthusiasm. Wade was not in a frame of mind to see any picturesqueness in that frowsy crowd. He was one of them; he walked dutifully behind his master, the Honorable Pulaski Britt. A little man, with neck wattled blue and red with queer suggestion of a turkey's characteristics, lurched out of a group and came at Pulaski Britt with a meek and watery smile of welcome. His knees doubled with a drunkard's limpness, and he had to run to keep from falling. Britt evidently did not propose to serve as dock for this human derelict. He stepped to one side with an oath, and the man made a dizzy whirl and dove headforemost under the train on the main track, and at that moment the train started. The man rolled over twice, and lay, serenely indifferent to death, on the outer rail. * * * * * After it was all over Wade sourly told himself that he acted as he did simply to avoid witnessing a hideous spectacle. For, in spite of Britt's yells of protest, he went under the car, missed the grinding wheels by an inch, and rolled out on the other side with the drunken man in his arms. And when the train had drawn out of the station he came back across the track, lugging the little man as he would carry a gripsack, tossed him into the open door of the baggage-car of the waiting train, spatted the dust off his own clothes, and went into the coach, casting surly looks at the sputtering inebriates who attempted to shake hands with him. When the train started Britt came again and penned the young man in his seat against the window-casing. "You've started in makin' yourself worth while, even if you are only the chaney man," vouchsafed his employer. "You did an infernal fool trick, but you've saved me Tommy Eye, the best teamster on the Umcolcus waters. As he lies there now he ain't worth half a cent a pound to feed to cats; when he's on a load with the webbin's in his hands I wouldn't take ten thousand dollars for him." "Is he a sort of personal property of yours?" asked Wade, sullenly. He was venting his own resentment at Pulaski Britt's airs of general proprietorship over men.