The last straw was the refusal of the despatcher at headquarters to allow Lister to reduce his tonnage. His train happened to be an unusually heavy one which, ordinarily, the 226 could have handled with ease. The despatcher knew this; he knew also that Lister had an unfortunate habit of complaining when there was nothing to complain about; so when this last complaint came in, he wired back a terse reply, telling Lister to “shut up, and bring in your train.” So Lister was raving angry by the time his engine limped feebly into the yards at Wadsworth. He jumped off almost before she stopped, and leaped up the stairs to the division offices two steps at a time, in order to unburden himself without delay of his opinion of the despatcher who had so heartlessly refused to help him out of his difficulties. He burst into the office like a whirlwind, red in the face, gasping for breath. “What’s the matter, Lister?” asked the train-master, looking up from his desk. “Matter!” yelled Lister. “Where’s that thick-headed despatcher? He ain’t fit to hold a job on this road!” “What did he do?” asked the train-master, grinning at the heads that had been stuck in from the adjoining rooms to find out what the noise was about. “Tell me what he did, and maybe I’ll fire him.” “I’ll tell you what he did! He made me handle my full train when I wired in here an’ told him my engine was leakin’ like a sieve. What do you think of a roundhouse foreman that’ll send an engine out in that shape?” “So you want me to fire the foreman, too?” queried the train-master, grinning more broadly. “Where is the engine?” “She’s down there in the yards,” said Lister. “What! Down in the yards! Do you mean to say you brought her in?” “Of course I brought her in,” said Lister. “They ain’t another engineer on th’ road could ’a’ done it, but I did it, an’ I want to tell you, Mr. Schofield—” A succession of sharp blasts from the whistle of the yard-engine interrupted him. “What’s that?” cried the train-master, and threw up the window, for the blasts meant that an accident of some sort had happened. The other men in the office rushed to the windows, too,—they saw the yardmen running madly about and gesticulating wildly,—and away up the yards they saw the 226 rattling over the switches at full speed, running wild! With a single bound the train-master was at the door of the despatcher’s office. “Where’s Number Four?” he demanded. Number Four was the fastest through passenger-train on the road—the east-bound flier, to which all other trains gave precedence. The despatcher in charge of the west end of the road looked up from his desk. “Number Four passed Anderson three minutes ago, sir,” he said. “She’s on time—she’s due here in eight minutes.” The train-master’s face grew suddenly livid; a cold sweat burst out across his forehead. “Good Lord!” he murmured, half to himself. “A wreck—no power on earth can help it!”