Then he would take off his cap, hold his head out of the cab window, and cool his temples in the dewy twilight. He had no thought now of danger; not the faintest appreciation of the risk he was running. He would drive her so to the very edge of the Mississippi, and, if the lights were white, and the switches right, and if it were necessary, he would take the trackless, tieless skeleton of the big bridge that was being built over the broad river. They were flying. The President of the C. & A., by a singular coincidence, was watching at the Columbia Theatre in Chicago, men and women going ’round the world in eighty days. “This,” thought the railway man, “is play-acting, and you can’t prove it. But this,” he would add, as message after message was passed into his box, “this play that the Alton is putting up to-night is the real thing.” The Midnight Express was thirty minutes over-due to leave when the driver of the special, pale but calm faced, dashed up to the station at East St. Louis and brought them to a stand with an emergency stop. “This is no boy’s business,” growled the Superintendent, as he hurried the young man from the special to the rear of the Midnight Express. “Where’s your father?” “In Chicago. Got any instructions?” The Superintendent handed the voyager an envelope containing a letter, his transportation, and a check for an upper berth. “Thank you,” said the young man, and, ignoring the insult to his tender age, he swung himself into one of the sleepers that were gliding by.