“Yard’s full o’ Homeless Kates an’ Wanderin’ Willies,” he explained to ･007. “I knew an old Fitchburg flat-car out seventeen months; an’ one of ours was gone fifteen ’fore ever we got track of her. Dunno quite how our men fix it. Swap around, I guess. Anyway, I’ve done _my_ duty. She’s on her way to Kansas, via Chicago; but I’ll lay my next boilerful she’ll be held there to wait consignee’s convenience, and sent back to us with wheat in the fall.” Just then the Pittsburgh Consolidation passed, at the head of a dozen cars. “I’m goin’ home,” he said proudly. “Can’t get all them twelve on to the flat. Break ’em in half, Dutchy!” cried Poney. But it was ･007 who was backed down to the last six cars, and he nearly blew up with surprise when he found himself pushing them on to a huge ferry-boat. He had never seen deep water before, and shivered as the flat drew away and left his bogies within six inches of the black, shiny tide. After this he was hurried to the freight-house, where he saw the yard-master, a smallish, white-faced man in shirt, trousers, and slippers, looking down upon a sea of trucks, a mob of bawling truckmen, and squadrons of backing, turning, sweating, spark-striking horses. “That’s shippers’ carts loadin’ on to the receivin’ trucks,” said the small engine, reverently. “But _he_ don’t care. He lets ’em cuss. He’s the Czar-King-Boss! He says ’Please,’ and then they kneel down an’ pray. There’s three or four strings o’ today’s freight to be pulled before he can attend to _them_. When he waves his hand that way, things happen.” A string of loaded cars slid out down the track, and a string of empties took their place. Bales, crates, boxes, jars, carboys, frails, cases, and packages flew into them from the freight-house as though the cars had been magnets and they iron filings. “Ki-yah!” shrieked little Poney. “Ain’t it great?” A purple-faced truckman shouldered his way to the yard-master, and shook his fist under his nose. The yard-master never looked up from his bundle of freight receipts. He crooked his forefinger slightly, and a tall young man in a red shirt, lounging carelessly beside him, hit the truckman under the left ear, so that he dropped, quivering and clucking, on a hay-bale. “Eleven, seven, ninety-seven, L. Y. S.; fourteen ought ought three; nineteen thirteen; one one four; seventeen ought twenty-one M. B.; _and_ the ten westbound. All straight except the two last. Cut ’em off at the junction. An’ _that’s_ all right. Pull that string.” The yard-master, with mild blue eyes, looked out over the howling truckmen at the waters in the moonlight beyond, and hummed: “All things bright and beautiful, All creatures great and small, _All_ things wise and wonderful, The Lawd Gawd He made all!” ･007 moved out the cars and delivered them to the regular road-engine. He had never felt quite so limp in his life before.