Out in a hayfield, he could see from his window a farmer gazing up at the humming wire, and the farmer's boy holding his ear to the pole, trying to understand. All this business that so blinded and bewildered with its mystery, not only the farmer, but the village folks as well, was to him as simple as sunshine. In a little while he had learned to read a newspaper with one eye and keep the other on the narrow window that looked out along the line; to mark with one ear the "down brakes" signal of the north-bound freight, clear in the siding, and with the other to catch the whistle of the oncoming "cannon ball," faint and far away. When Jewett had been at Springdale some six or eight months, another young man dropped from the local one morning, and said, "_Wie gehts_," and handed him a letter. The letter was from the Superintendent, calling him back to Bloomington to despatch trains. Being the youngest of the despatchers, he had to take the "death trick." The day man used to work from eight o'clock in the morning until four o'clock in the afternoon, the "split trick" man from four until midnight, and the "death trick" man from midnight until morning. We called it the "death trick" because, in the early days of railroading, we had a lot of wrecks about four o'clock in the morning. That was before double tracks and safety inventions had made travelling by rail safer than sleeping at home, and before trainmen off duty had learned to look not on liquor that was red. Jewett, however, was not long on the night shift. He was a good despatcher,--a bit risky at times, the chief thought, but that was only when he knew his man. He was a rusher and ran trains close, but he was ever watchful and wide awake. In two years' time he had become chief despatcher. During these years the country, so quiet when he first went to Bloomington, had been torn by the tumult of civil strife.