"But listen--I am telling you," said old Con O'Connel, the railroad builder, his voice rolling and sweet as the bells of Shandon: "To-night I hear a footfall in the rain--that of Tim Cannon, the messenger." So that was the undertone which had arrested their thoughts; the rush of footfalls symbolizing to the group, every one, the pursuit of himself by a belated messenger. They settled themselves, relieved and smiling; after all the thing had been naturally suggested to them by the echo of rain on the broad plate windows. And they nodded their heads to Con, still listening. The footfall of Tim Cannon, a name of ancient days on the P. D. Railroad; but as the story does not concern him except as Molly Regan's messenger I will leave him come into it in his own time and take up with the Regans themselves. Two of them there were to begin with--young Michael, swinging a lusty pick in a construction gang of the Great Southwest Railway; and Molly, a pretty bride with solemn wondering gaze and air of listening to things which no one else could hear. Often Mike would smile at her queer fancies that there are things to learn and do beyond the day's work, and after the Great Southwest has been builded and he has laid aside pick and shovel to become track boss at Turntable Station this queerness of Molly's leads her into playing a great joke on her husband. For she saves her odd pennies against his birthday and presents him with a book. "A book of higher knowledge, it is," she says, while Mike scratches his head in awe; and she must kiss him for the kind interest he takes and that evening read to him a page in a voice like the song of soldiers marching. Mike toils after in mind with his big fists gripping and forehead glistening in the struggle to remember the journey, but at the end a darkness comes down on him, and the two gaze at each other uneasily and the page is read over again. But devil a bit can Mike remember of it, so that he sits despairing with his head between his hands. "Do not mind, Molly," he says then; "you shall study on alone at the higher knowledge, having a joy of it which is not for me." He says this, looking up to smile, and yet the big hands hold on to hers as if fearing she was being stolen away. But Molly answers him back so clear and strong that the song of soldiers marching is nothing to it. "'T is only the joke I am playing. Am I the wife to bother you with learning when you know already so much," she says, "and have the care of the section on your mind, with ties to lay straight and rails to spike fast so that the great railroad may run?" And when he speaks once more of the study she should make of knowledge Molly closes the big book and sets it on the mantel along with the clock. "'T is for ornament, and now you know why I bought it from the peddler," she explains; "for every household of pretension must have a book."