The packing was new, but Gertrude persisted, the bar yielded, and to her great fright things began to hiss. The engine moved like a roaring leviathan, and the author of the mischief screamed, tried to stop it, and being helpless appealed to the unshaven man to help her. Glover, however, was nearest and shut off. It was all very exciting, and when on the turntable Gertrude was told by the doctor that her suit was completely ruined she merely held up both her blackened gloves, laughing, as Glover came up; and caught up her begrimed skirt and joined him with a flush on her cheeks as bright as a danger signal. Some fervor of the magical day, under those skies where autumn itself is only a heavier wine than spring, something of the deep breath of the mountain scene seemed to infect her. She walked at Glover's side. She recalled with the slightest pretty mirth his fetching the ladder--the way in which he had crossed a flat car by planting the ladder alongside, mounting, pulling the steps after him, and descending on them to the other side. In her humor she faintly suggested his awkward competence in doing things, and he, too, laughed. As they crossed track after track she would place the toe of her boot on a rail glittering in the sun, and rising, balance an instant to catch an answer from him before going on. There was no haste in their manner. They had crossed the railroad yard, strangers; they recrossed it quite other. Their steps they retraced, but not their path. The path that led them that day together to the engine was never to be retraced. To worry Crosby's new locomotive, Blood's car had been ordered added to the westbound limited, but neither Glover nor Blood spent any time in the private car. The afternoon went in the Pullman with Gertrude Brock and Doctor Lanning. At dinner Glover did the ordering because he had earlier planned to celebrate the promotion, already known, of Morris Blood to the general superintendency. If there were few lines along which the construction engineer could shine he at least appeared to advantage as the host of his friend, since the ordering of a dinner is peculiarly a gentleman's matter, and even the modest complement of wine which the occasion demanded, Glover toasted in a way that revealed the boyish loyalty between the two men. The spirit of it was so contagious that neither the doctor nor Gertrude made scruple of adding their congratulations. But the moments were fleeting and Glover, next day, could recall them up to one scene only. When Gertrude found she could not, even after a brave effort, ride with her back to the engine, and accepted so graciously Mr. Blood's offer to change seats, it brought her beside Glover; after that his memory failed. In the morning he felt miserably overdone, as at Sleepy Cat a man might after running a preliminary half way to heaven. Moreover, when they parted he had, he remembered, undertaken to dine the following evening at the Springs.