"I had been running about two years, and had paid about as much attention to young women as I had to the subject of astronomy, until Madelene Bridges came out of a Southern convent to make her home with her uncle, our 'old man.' "The first time I saw her I went clean, stark, raving, blind, drunken daft over her. I tried to argue and reason myself out of it, but it was no go. I didn't even know who she was then. "But I was in love and, being so, wasn't hardly safe on the road. "Then I spruced up and started in to see if I couldn't interest her in me half as much as I was interested in her. "I didn't have much trouble to get a start, for Andy Bridges had come up from the ranks and hadn't forgotten it--most of 'em do--and welcomed any decent young man in his house, even if he was a car hand. Madelene had a couple of marriageable cousins then and that may account for old Andy. "I got on pretty well at first, for I was first in the field. I got in a theatre or two before the other young fellows caught on. About this time there was a dance, and I lost my grip. I took Madelene but couldn't dance, and all the others could, especially Dandy Tamplin, one of the train despatchers. "I took private dancing lessons, however, and squared myself that way. "Singing was a favorite mode of passing the evenings with the young folks at the Bridges's home, and I cursed myself for being tuneless. "It finally settled down to a race between Tamplin and myself, and each of us was doing his level best. I was so dead in earnest and so truly in love that I was no fit company for man or beast, and I'm afraid I was twice as awkward and dull in Madelene's presence as in any other place. "Dandy Tamplin was a handsome young fellow, and a formidable rival, for he was always well-dressed, a good talker and more or less of a lady's man. Besides that, he was on the ground all the time and I had to be away two-thirds of the time on my runs. "I came in one trip determined to know my fate that very evening--had my little piece all committed to memory. "As I registered I heard one of the other despatchers, behind a partition, telling some one that he was going to work Dandy's trick until eleven o'clock, and then the two entered into a discussion of Dandy's quest of the 'old man's' niece, one of them remarking that all the opposition he had was Hopkins and that wasn't worth considering. I resolved to get to Bridges's ahead of Tamplin. "But man--railroad man, anyway--proposes and the superintendent disposes. I met Bridges at the door. "'Hopkins,' said he, 'I want you to do me a personal favor.' "'Yes, sir.' "'I want you to double out in half an hour on some perishable freight that's coming in from the West; there isn't one available engine in. Will you do it?' "'Yes,' I answered, slowly, showing my disappointment. 'But, Mr. Bridges, I was particularly anxious to go up to your house to-night; I intend to ask--'