“Yes,” said McGuire, with his heart hitting his vest like a trip-hammer, “but not now. I’ll make that report when other men are reporting to me.” “I don’t understand you.” “You will when you see my report. Listen! When I am the Superintendent and have outgrown this beastly uniform, I’ll send you that song, and if you get it, then I’ll forward my report.” He was so handsome, his eyes glowing with the light of love, his voice so full of emotion, that a woman with cooler blood than that which flowed in the veins of the Gloucester girl might have been moved. She held out her hand (she had removed one of her gloves) and McGuire seized it. Glancing through the glass door, he raised it to his lips, and she suffered him to do so. She felt the ring on his finger, and remembered that she had felt it once before. It was his hand that she had pressed, accidentally, over there in the storm. When the train swung ’round the curve and stopped at the station, the conductor touched his cap and dropped off. When he had registered “in” he came out, and the Gloucester girl, watching at the window, saw him cross the little swinging bridge and lose himself in the narrow, unpaved streets of what, to her, seemed a dreary little town. CHAPTER XIX A NEW LINE WHEN a man sets his heart on a thing he can accomplish a great deal in a comparatively short time. Thomas McGuire had been a careful, industrious employee. He had never acquired the habit of wasting all of his leisure hours and spare dollars in the wild resorts of the thriving towns that lay at either end of his run. He began now to study the history of American railways. He devoured everything in print, from the local weekly paper to the monthly magazines and reviews. He bought, begged, and borrowed books that would give him more or less of the financial history of the various railways of the country. He had the advantage of a fair education, which enabled him to read rapidly and understandingly. What he longed for and worked for was promotion, but it seemed to go by the other way. He grew impatient. To be sure, nobody ran around him, but promotion came slowly. Nobody seemed to want to quit, or get killed, and so, when the Inter-Mountain Air Line was built, McGuire got in on the ground floor. He had the first passenger train on the road, and in a little while was made trainmaster, but there he hung for a whole year. Another step would put him in a place where he could send his song to Gloucester, but he was powerless to help himself on. At last an Assistant Superintendent was appointed and McGuire got the job.