The work of lighting the red lantern with his flaming torch was not easy but it was not so difficult, though he burned his fingers. This done he cast the magazine from the iron bar well clear of the little tower house. Then he tied the red lantern to the end of the bar and tried to devise a way of lodging the bar so that it would remain in its horizontal position, projecting from the window. This, with all his ingenuity, he could not do so he leaned out of the window holding the rod with his tired, nimble, little hands. “Anyway, gee whiz, that was a dandy inspiration,” he panted in a feeling of exquisite relief. “It shows I got a lot of resources, you bet.” He meant _resource_ but what’s the difference? CHAPTER XXII PEE-WEE LAYS DOWN THE LAW TO THE JUDGE Down out of the mountains came the night express, thundering along, fifty-seven minutes late. It awakened the echoes from the surrounding hills and scattered the little creatures of the bordering woods like a mighty, conquering autocrat. Indomitable, heedless it went its way. Its weary passengers gazed listlessly out of the windows into the darkness; some of them slept. It skirted Shelving Mountain, startling that wooded giant with its call, and the answer came distant and faint as if the mountain were almost asleep. Along the straight, even stretch westward it picked up to sixty-three miles and telegraphed its clamorous clanking and rattling along the sensitive rails miles and miles ahead. Such an uproar in the quiet night! Suddenly Justice Dopett of the New Jersey Supreme Court got a bunk in the head and he sat up rubbing his learned dome sympathetically with his aged hand. The lady sitting just in front of him had likewise been aroused out of her slumber by the sudden jolt as the cars shunted prior to the quick stop. “What’s the matter?” everyone asked, rather apprehensively. No one seemed to know. “Anything wrong?” two or three asked a brake-man who hurried through the train. “Guess not,” he grumbled. There is something very disturbing about a train stopping suddenly. And this is the more so because it is so difficult to get information from the powers in control. They hurry back and forth in a mysterious manner possible of the gravest interpretation and no one is the wiser. On this occasion, however, the passengers in the first car were fortunate in receiving their information directly from headquarters. It seemed to be poured down on them from above in buckets full. It streamed in through the open windows on the breeze. Nothing was withheld.