Regan, the master mechanic, by the window, was mouthing curses under his breath as men do in times of stress; Spence, the despatcher, white-faced, the hair straggling into his eyes, was leaning over the key under the green-shaded lamp, over the key clearing the line while the sounder clicked in his ears of ruin and of lives gone out. Harvey, the division engineer, was there, pulling savagely at a brier with empty bowl. And at the despatcher's elbow stood Carleton, a grim commander, facing tidings of disaster, his shoulders braced and bent a little forward as though to take the blow, his jaws clamped tight till the lips, compressed, were bloodless, and the chiselled lines on his face told of the bitterness in his heart. Then Flannagan stepped forward. "Carleton," he cried, and his words came like panting sobs, "Carleton, give me back my job." It was no place for Flannagan. Carleton's cup was already full to overflowing, and he swung on Flannagan like a flash. His hand lifted and pointed to the door. "Get out of here!" he said between his teeth. "Carleton," cried Flannagan again, and his arms went out in supplication toward the super, "Carleton, give me back my job--give it back to me for to-night--just for to-night." "No!" the single word came from Carleton's lips like a thunder clap. Flannagan shivered a little and shrank back. "Just for to-night," he mumbled hoarsely. "Just for----" "No!" Carleton's voice rang hard as flint. "I tell you, no! Get out of here!" Harvey moved suddenly, threateningly, toward Flannagan--and, as suddenly, Flannagan, roused by the act, brushed the division engineer aside like a plaything, sprang forward, and, with a quick, fierce grip, caught Carleton's arms and pinioned them, vise-like, to his sides. "And I tell you, yes!" his voice rose dominant with the power, the will that shook him now to the depths of his turbulent soul. As a man who knows no law, no obstacle, no restraint, as a man who would batter down the gates of hell itself to gain his end, so then was Flannagan. "I tell you, yes! I tell you, yes! _My wife and baby's in that wreck to-night?_" Turmoil, shouts, the short, quick intermittent hiss of steam as the 1014, her cylinder cocks open, backed down to the platform, the clash of coupling cars, a jumbled medley of sounds, floated up from the yard without--but within the little room, the chattering sounder for the moment stilled, there fell a silence as of death, and no man among them moved or spoke. Flannagan, gray-faced, gasping, his mighty grip still on Carleton, his head thrown forward close to the other's, stared into the super's face--and, for a long minute, in the twitching muscles of the big wrecker's face, in the look that man reads seldom in his fellows' eyes, Carleton drew the fearful picture, lived the awful story that the babbling wire had told. "Royal" Carleton, square man and big of heart, his voice broke. "God help you, Flannagan--go."