“Hush!” he murmured. “I keep my own counsels in business matters when I can do so without betraying the interests of my employers, and when they don't want to be bothered by my personal affairs.” Shayne gave the engineer a long stare of honest admiration. “Parker,” he gasped, “you never said a word? You're a---- Here, give me you hand again!” [Illustration: Parker give me your hand again 254-286] A half hour later the lumbermen went across the Poquette Carry in a train made up of the engine and the coach--“the first real special train over the road,” Parker said. Before the young engineer left for his summer vacation, he made a long canoe journey up into the Moxie section, ostensibly on a fishing expedition. He was gone ten days, a longer period than he had predicted to his assistant manager. When he came down the West Branch one afternoon he helped Joshua Ward to lift a crippled man out of their canoe, and he carefully directed the helpers who carried the unfortunate person to the coach. “I'm afraid the trip across the carry in a buckboard after the old manner would have been too rough for you, Colonel Ward,” remarked Parker, as the train clanked along under the big trees. “I think I was never more glad to offer modern conveniences to any traveller across this carry. You understand how deep my sincerity is in this, I am positive.” “I understand everything better than I did, Parker,” returned Colonel Ward, feelingly, turning away wet eyes. The astonishment in Sunkhaze settlement when the doughty ex-tyrant was borne through to the “down-country” train, accompanied by Parker and Joshua, was so intense that only the postmaster recovered himself in season to put a few leading questions. After the train had gone he announced the results of his findings to the crowd that clustered about him on the station platform. “Near's I can find out,” he said, “that young Parker has been way up into the Moxie region an' found old Gid, and spent a week gettin' round him and coaxin' him to go 'long with him and Josh to the city, and be fitted to new hands and feet, that, so they tell me, is so ingenious a fellow can walk round and cut his own victuals and all that. Well, that will help old Gid a little. If the blamed old sanup could only be fitted out with a new disposition at the same time, we folks round here would be more pleased to see him, come back.” “Postmaster,” cried Dan Connick, who had been one of those who bore the colonel from the landing in a chair, “don't you ever worry any more about a new disposition for Gid Ward. Those things come from the hand of God, and Colonel Gid has already been fitted out with the heart and soul of a man!” “Then,” declared Dodge, gazing to where the smoke wreaths from the departing locomotive hung above the distant treetops, “I reckon we've just seen in bodily shape the passin' of the old in this section as well as the comin' of the new.” THE END